Inter Press ServiceGender Violence – Inter Press Servicehttp://www.ipsnews.net
News and Views from the Global SouthFri, 13 Sep 2019 21:17:01 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.8.10Domestic violence: Still a formidable challengehttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/domestic-violence-still-formidable-challenge/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=domestic-violence-still-formidable-challenge
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/domestic-violence-still-formidable-challenge/#respondFri, 06 Sep 2019 19:03:13 +0000Talisha Farukhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=163131After a week’s absence, Nazma entered the house with a lacklustre expression spread across her normally cheerful demeanour, with the slack of her sari pulled low over her face. When questioned in regards to her absence, while hesitant at first, she later revealed that she had been repeatedly threatened, forced to have sexual intercourse, and […]

After a week’s absence, Nazma entered the house with a lacklustre expression spread across her normally cheerful demeanour, with the slack of her sari pulled low over her face. When questioned in regards to her absence, while hesitant at first, she later revealed that she had been repeatedly threatened, forced to have sexual intercourse, and consequently suffered a miscarriage.

A few weeks prior to Nazma’s revelation, I learned about a friend’s divorce from her longstanding abusive husband. While I was elated at the news that my friend was finally free from the reigns of domestic violence, she revealed how her divorce, instead of securing a life of freedom, had instead thrown her into a custody battle over her only child and had caused further suffering as a result of constant threats from her ex-husband and his family. When the fights became unbearable, my friend turned to both the police as well as her family and received the same dire response: “These things happen in a marriage. Learn to compromise.”

Domestic violence remains an issue irrespective of socioeconomic status in Bangladesh. I hear the same outcry for help from Nazma, whose spouse works as a rickshaw-puller, as I do from a friend, whose former spouse owns a thriving garments company in Bangladesh. This is an issue, which holds no bias.

Violence against women is one of most rampant human rights violations worldwide, and is further exacerbated by unequal power dynamics between women and men that is reinforced by inequalities under the law. According to UN Women, one in five adolescent girls, in Bangladesh, between ages 15 and 19, reported experiencing sexual violence at the hands of their partner. Moreover, more than 80 percent of currently married women have experienced abuse at least once during their marriage, in most cases from individuals they knew and trusted, and more than one in four women experience sexual or physical violence of some sort during their lifetime. In total, according to the Violence Against Women Survey 2011, a nationwide study conducted by the government, at least 87 percent of Bangladeshi women face domestic violence.

There is light at the end of the tunnel, however. Over the last few decades, the country has adopted several laws and policies meant to address violence against women and girls, such as the 2009 High Court’s Directive on Sexual Harassment, the Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Act (DVPP) 2010, the Women and Child Repression Suppression Act, and the revision and launch of the National Action Plan on violence against women and children in November 2018. Bangladesh further experienced advancements made in terms of policy framework, with victories such as the High Court’s eradication of the degrading “two-finger test” for rape victims and the more recent removal of the term “Kumari” (virgin) from column 5 of Bangladesh’s standardised Muslim marriage contract.

In the third chapter of the DVPP Act of 2010, the duties and responsibilities of police officers, enforcement officers (EO) and service providers are detailed. Under Section 4, if a “police officer obtains, by any means whatsoever, the information as to the commission of an act of domestic violence or becomes aware of such occurrence”, such an officer shall inform the survivor of her rights, “including the right to make an application for obtaining relief by way of any order under this Act,” of the availability of medical services, and of the services offered by the EO. The police officer must also inform the individual of her right to free legal help under the Legal Aid Services Act, 2000 and her right to file a formal complaint under other existing laws.

Bangladeshi women’s and human rights organisations, including Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (BLAST), Mahila Parishad, Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK), Bangladesh National Women Lawyers’ Association (BNWLA), and several other organisations actively provide different forms of assistance (legal aid, mediation, halfway homes, etc.) for those affected by domestic violence. Some organisations such as ASK even provide free legal advice to any person who contacts the organisation at any of the legal clinics located across Dhaka city. Given the safety battles associated with filing a formal complaint, ASK also provides fieldworkers who accompany clients to police stations, the Marriage Register’s (Kazi’s) offices, hospitals, and to the courts when necessary. The BNWLA shelter homes, Proshanti, also provide shelter services to women and children as they await legal aid.

Furthermore, Maya Apa, a messaging platform provides on-demand health and well-being information online, whereby users can pose their health and legal questions anonymously to experts within the respective fields. This allows users to overcome the social stigma oft-associated with seeking support and discussing sensitive subjects.

With such a myriad of services and legal sanctions in place throughout the country, it was expected that domestic violence against women would decline; yet, current statistics have contradicted such assumptions and violence against women remains widespread.

One of the primary pitfalls within the system lies in the enforcement of legal doctrines, lack of adequate training for law enforcement officers, the public’s inability to navigate the legal arena, and in the inability/refusal to seek refuge when required. As of 2015, only 2.6 percent of women in Bangladesh took legal action against the physical or sexual violence they have endured at the hands of their partners. Cultural norms also make it difficult for women to seek assistance because of the sociocultural stigma associated with seeking legal aid and taking a case to court, which is often equated with “dishonouring the family name”.

Like many battles in Bangladesh, it evidently comes down to which party has more power—the victim or the perpetrator. Even if survivors do manage to access the law, they often experience trauma on their journey to obtain justice. Incidents of police inertia as well as brutal harassment of women are commonplace, along with having to pay bribes to register cases, which often unravel based on political patronage and economic influence. Furthermore, patriarchal social structures, cultural and religious dogma and superstitions further aggravate the problems.

However, the tendency to commit violence within the family is so deeply rooted that it is only by the proper enforcement of law that we can curb it. Moreover, there exists a strong need, for capacity building of institutions, ensuring sufficiency of resources, coupled with education and awareness of the drivers, and increased cooperation between state and non-state actors. As stated by the UN CEDAW Committee, in order to promote Women’s Human Rights, the Bangladeshi government must commit to ensuring greater gender equality, improving service delivery, and heightening access to immediate means of redress, rehabilitation, and protection.

A home is meant to serve as a sanctuary. Unfortunately, it is also a breeding ground for some of the most life-threatening forms of violence. Therefore, the next time we are approached for assistance by a loved one or we witness the suffering of someone we know, we should provide them with the reassurance and direction they so desperately need, for such incidences are not matters to be resolved at home, alone and in fear. Our women are putting enviable successes in different sectors all over the map, and it is high time we do the utmost to encourage their safe and healthy development.

Talisha Faruk has a bachelor’s degree in Legal Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and is currently working as an Immigration Paralegal for the law firm Berry Appleman & Leiden, LLP in California. Additionally, she is also working as an intern for Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (BLAST).

Every year, over 12,000 women are killed in Latin America. The region is plagued by extremely high levels of violence, and a vacuum of state power persists. Public face of this violence is caused by paramilitary, guerrilla, gangs and armed groups.

But there is an interrelated side of domestic violence that plays out in the private domain. The relationship between these two are yet to be understood, as is the potential of the Women, Peace and Security agenda (WPS) as a fundamental ingredient to sustainable peace and a life free from violence and fear.

The WPS agenda is a United Nations invention. Amid the increasing recognition of women’s and girls’ rights since the creation of the organization in 1945, it was only in the year 2000 that the organization recognized that conflicts affect women and girls, men and boys differently.

Notwithstanding the considerable expansion of engagement with the agenda globally, there is a persistent gap in Latin America. The engagement of local women’s organizations has been limited, while governments are yet to fully grasp the central importance of the agenda in terms of promoting sustainable peace.

Women are systematically excluded from conversations concerning peace and security in the region, rarely included in peace negotiations and are the minority in police and military forces. The WPS agenda has an enormous potential do recognize and address some of these issues

Only six countries in the region launched National Action Plans (NAP) to implement the agenda, and with the exception of El Salvador and Guatemala, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Paraguay mostly focus on their missions carried out abroad.

Ultimately, the gruesome reality of local women living in areas dominated by organized crime, or those that have joined these groups is yet to be understood or recognized by local governments.

There is little evidence on how women’s lives are affected by the extremely high levels of violence that plagues the region. Not only data is limited, only few policies dedicated to addressing violence against women are evidence based.

To make matters worse, there is a normative gap when it comes to addressing these challenges. While NAPs do not recognize these challenges, national legislation focuses on domestic forms of violence. The interplay between private and public violence as well as the direct and indirect effects of organized violence on women in the region are mostly ignored.

Women also consist the primary victims of human trafficking and are often caught up in the crossfire of armed groups, when they are not directly target due to their relationship to members of different groups or gangs.

Violence affects their ability to access formal education, achieve economic independence and even political participation. It also bears the brunt of indirect forms of violence that are rarely recognized, including caring for the injured, emotional trauma among many others.

In Brazil, literally thousands of mothers have lost their sons in marginalized communities, where they are murdered on a daily basis.

Throughout the Americas, women have also joined armed groups and organized crime, serving in various types of roles from combat to support. This is particularly apparent in Colombia, where women made up 44% of the fighting force for Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP).

However, even when women take part in these groups, they are often in less powerful and more vulnerable positions. The increased incarceration of women in the region is strong evidence of that. And what is worst, organized crime is born within prison, and that is where we are putting them.

Women are systematically excluded from conversations concerning peace and security in the region, rarely included in peace negotiations and are the minority in police and military forces. The WPS agenda has an enormous potential do recognize and address some of these issues.

However, countries in the region must recognize their high levels of violence and implement NAPs that are adequate to the reality of women living within boundaries. In times where political turbulence may disrupt the women’s rights agenda in many parts of the world, it is increasingly important to build evidence to inform policies and strengthen civil society groups who are in a unique position to remind governments of their commitments to women’s rights and their physical integrity.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/promoting-womens-safety-latin-america/feed/0The Nairobi Summit – Towards a Watershed Momenthttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/nairobi-summit-towards-watershed-moment/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=nairobi-summit-towards-watershed-moment
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/nairobi-summit-towards-watershed-moment/#respondThu, 08 Aug 2019 16:03:21 +0000Dr. Ida Odingahttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162779In 2019 a female scientist created an algorithm that gave the world the first ever images of a black hole. Working with a team of astronomers, physicists, mathematicians and engineers, a young woman led the development of a computer program that in her own words enabled them to “achieve something once thought impossible.” During this […]

In 2019 a female scientist created an algorithm that gave the world the first ever images of a black hole. Working with a team of astronomers, physicists, mathematicians and engineers, a young woman led the development of a computer program that in her own words enabled them to “achieve something once thought impossible.”

Photo: Heshimi Kenya

During this same year, over 200 million women in developing countries will not have access to effective methods of contraception to delay or avoid pregnancy. Approximately 830 women a day will die during pregnancy or childbirth from preventable causes. And sexual and gender based violence including harmful practices like early marriage and female genital mutilation, will still plague millions of girls and young women. Girls and women denied basic human rights and robbed of their potential to achieve the impossible.

In 1994, the visionary Programme of Action was agreed to by 179 governments at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, Egypt. The Programme of Action recognized that reproductive health and rights, as well as women’s empowerment and gender equality, are cornerstones of healthy robust societies that promote the well-being of populations and economic and social development of nations. Since ICPD, governments, civil society, youth networks have all worked towards decreasing maternal deaths, eliminating harmful practices and promoting gender equality.

The global community is now gearing up to mark 25 years since the historic ICPD through the Nairobi Summit on the International Conference on Population and Development, ICPD25 which will be held from 12-14 November 2019 under the theme “Accelerating the Promise”.

I am proud that my country Kenya, will be hosting this important Summit, which is aimed at mobilizing the political will, financial commitment and community support we need to fully realize the ICPD Programme of Action.

Indeed, by the time we leave Nairobi, we must ensure that everyone has agreed to play their part in reaching zero unmet need for family planning information and services, zero preventable maternal deaths, and zero sexual and gender-based violence and harmful practices against girls and women. Evidence shows that the benefits that would accrue from fulfilling the ICDP agenda would be far reaching in transforming lives and improving the wellbeing of families, communities, and nations.

Dr. Ida Odinga, EGH

In Kenya, significant progress in health care has been made with Universal Health Coverage(UHC) a top priority for the Government. Thanks to the leadership, passion and commitment of the First Lady of Kenya, Ms Margret Kenyatta through her Beyond Zero campaign there has been a significant drop in maternal and child mortality. We have to now go for zero deaths. Reproductive, maternal, neonatal, child and adolescent health is key to achieving UHC.

High rates of teenage pregnancy, take girls out of school and compromises their health. Young people face stark challenges in employment as 1,000,000 people enter a labor force that can only absorb 150,000 new entrants. Access to health services and information, school retention and quality education will help these young girls stay in school and lead healthy lives. These are among the issues that the Summit will address.

However, in order for the Nairobi Summit to be a game changer, we need to speak for those that can’t speak, speak for those who are not heard and to add our voices to those who continue to work for sexual and reproductive rights for all. We must reaffirm our commitments to the ICPD goals and Agenda 2030. We must absorb the lessons learned over the last 25 years and do better.

I am delighted that my country is partnering with UNFPA and the Government of Denmark to host the Nairobi Summit and reaffirm the global commitment to ICPD. This is a watershed moment as we are a mere 10 years away from our commitment to fulfill the SDGs.

I look forward to seeing all the participants in Nairobi and hope everyone will follow the proceedings of the Nairobi Summit and learn how we can all play a role in bringing about change and keeping the promise of ICPD. Ensuring that all women and girls can reach for the stars and achieve the impossible.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/nairobi-summit-towards-watershed-moment/feed/0Domestic Violence and the Role of Educationhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/domestic-violence-role-education/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=domestic-violence-role-education
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/domestic-violence-role-education/#respondThu, 08 Aug 2019 11:32:36 +0000Jan Lundiushttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162767Trying to teach and inspire youngsters is a daunting task. Many teachers tend to suffer from a harrowing, bad conscience, obliged as they are to follow routines, rules, and regulations set down by their employers while knowing that these are difficult to apply and provide with desired results. Worst is a nagging feeling of inability […]

Trying to teach and inspire youngsters is a daunting task. Many teachers tend to suffer from a harrowing, bad conscience, obliged as they are to follow routines, rules, and regulations set down by their employers while knowing that these are difficult to apply and provide with desired results. Worst is a nagging feeling of inability to reach out to the students. Most teachers want their pupils to be good learners, critically thinking individuals who feel gratified and keen to change things for the better.

Occasionally, I return to my original profession as a high school teacher. Long intervals between such experiences make it possible for me to perceive attitude changes among students and myself. When I two years ago had another stint of teaching in Sweden I found a new obstacle to students´ interest in direct social interaction and learning – smartphones. In many schools, they are now banned from lessons, though not from the one where I was working. Many of the teachers were quite young and belonged to the mobile phone generation. They explained that smartphones had become an essential part of their lives and instead of being banned they ought to be integrated into education.

Smartphones infringed on many students´ attention. Several felt forced to look at them over and over again – texting, checking things on the web, playing games, doing selfies, nothing of which had anything to do with school work. I found some of my pupils to be incapable of concentrating on a specific task, listening to me or even watch a movie for more than five minutes. No matter how exciting they originally had found the film, they soon felt an uncontrollable urge to switch on and check their smartphones. When I asked what could be so extremely urgent, they generally lied and said it was their mother calling, or that they had been alerted about some kind of emergency. However, I soon found out that several of the girls were checking out Kim Kardashian´s website, while boys often had become absorbed in some inane game, like directing a rolling ball through meandering tunnels.

Before my latest teaching experience, I had been happily unaware of Kim Kardashian´s influence on women’s´ lives, but now I know that she and other members of her family have a combined Instagram-following of more than 536 million and that Keeping Up With the Kardashians, a reality television series following the lives of Kim and her four sisters, is running on its 16th season. However, Kim´s coffee table book Selfish from 2015, presenting selfies she had taken over the time of nine years, ”flopped” – selling ”only” 125,000 copies. Apart from ”acting” in a reality show and posting entries on Instagram, Kim has a line of clothing and other items mirroring the Kardashians´”aspirational and over-the-top lifestyle”, celebrating a body image of slim waists, large breasts and hips, ”a hyper-feminised, high-glamour look that seems calculated to entice the male gaze, sexy rather than being fashionable,”1 while Keeping Up With the Kardashians pays hommage to a fake existence of staged worries, petty concerns and idle gossip, where ”having fun” equals expensive activities at luxury resorts and spas, or the planning of and participation in clamorous, superficial and glittering parties. Kim Kardashian´s influence cannot be ignored, her fame and wealth make even a notoriously bad listener like U.S. President Donald J. Trump willing to lend her an ear.

The Kardashian style, as the family´s approach to life is called in the TV-series, is reflected by an app that was immensely popular among many of my female students. It is a role-playing game in which participants are invited to impersonate an ”up-and-coming” Hollywood celebrity climbing a status ladder passing ”levels of stardom” from E to A, completing tasks like posing for magazines and going on dates. This while the more enterprising among my school-tired male students were engaged in complicated and violent role-playing video games like Grand Theft Auto V and Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds. It felt as if the entire school system was under a massive attack from commercial interests, which apart from being mind-numbing are cementing prejudicial gender roles.

Antiquated attitudes about gender roles among several of my students made me doubt if they had participated in an obligatory subject of the Swedish elementary school system – home and consumer knowledge, which for several years train boys and girls in managing household chores and childcare. No one who has received that training might claim to be unknowledgeable about elementary household chores. Furthermore, in Swedish schools, both boys and girls are trained in needlework, as well as metal- and wood handicraft. I find this approach highly commendable as it benefits a sense of responsibility and gender equality. However, these admirable gains may be counteracted by mass communication supporting bigoted gender roles that limit and predispose abilities and perspective of both girls and boys.

If human development is to be achieved, the best resolution of any nation would be to promote general wellbeing and prosperity by providing effective and affordable health care and education to all of its citizens, irrespective of gender, wealth and social standing. Furthermore, such education has to benefit gender equality and encourage personal accountability. Most of my students were well aware of the concept of human rights, i.e. their own rights, though they were often unaware that this concept includes human duties, i.e. concerns about the welfare of others.

I recently came to think of this after reading a well-written Italian novel Sei Mia: Un amore violento by Eleonora de Nardis, which describes the suffering of a mother of three under the brutal and degrading regime of a spouse, who furthermore is married to and sharing a family with another woman. I am convinced that this novel illustrated the suffering of women all around the world. Women who on their own carry the entire responsibility of running a home and taking care of children engendered together with an irresponsible man, who furthermore, as in Sei Mia, abuses, maltreats and controls the mother of his own offspring under the feeble pretext that this is his right as a man, assuming that his gender excludes him from cooking, childcare, and expressions of emotional care for his family, as well as compassion and responsibility for the wellbeing of others.

It is scientifically proven that domestic violence generally occurs when an abuser assumes he is entitled to behave as a selfish tyrant. A male perpetrator of domestic violence is often supported, accepted and even justified by his socio-cultural upbringing and ambiance. A background and attitude that tends to be shared by his victims, who are unlikely to report this kind of violence to authorities that often condone the abuser´s behaviour. Several legal systems make a difference between ”domestic” and ”common” law and it is quite common that it is up to a victim to report domestic violence, under the pretext that this cannot be done by an ”outsider”. An absurdity considering that it often proves to be fatal for a victim to even consider accusing a violent, capricious abuser who exercises total control and to whom she is entirely dependent.2 Such a state of affairs produces an intergenerational cycle of abuse in children and other family members, who are brought up to consider such abuse as acceptable. Attitudes that may only be changed through an obligatory education, which breaks down gender inequalities. Efforts that have to be combined with the strict application of laws penalizing domestic abuse, while safeguarding male responsibilities for support of their households, making it obligatory to participate in the care of their children, for example by guaranteeing not only maternal leave from work but paternal leave as well.

There is a direct correlation between a country´s level of gender equality and rates of domestic violence, where countries with less gender equality experience higher rates of domestic abuse. Domestic violence is an abominable crime that not only cripples the ability for victims to participate ihe creation of genern tal, social wellbeing, it also tends to destroy or frustrate children´s development as compassionate and progressive human beings. Apparently, has Swedish education had a beneficial impact on gender equality and when it comes to the condemnation of domestic violence. However, I hope the impact of stereotyped gender roles propagated by trendsetters and some influential video game developers will not be able to diminish such achievements.

On a cold night in December 2012, a ghastly crime was committed in New Delhi which stunned the world. Six men dragged helpless Nirbhaya-a 23-year-old female physiotherapy intern- to the back of the bus and raped her one by one. As she kept fighting off her assailants by biting them, one of the attackers inserted a rusted rod in her private part, ripping her genital organs and insides apart. She died a few days later. One of the accused died in police custody in the Tihar Jail. The juvenile was convicted of rape and murder and given the maximum sentence of three years’ imprisonment in a reform facility, and subsequently released. The Supreme Court awarded the death penalty but legal complications have prevented its execution.

Farhana Haque Rahman

A gruesome case occurred in Rohtak, a town in the northern state of Haryana (India). In 2017, a 23-year-old woman was gang raped by seven men, killed and smashed in the face with stones to conceal her identity. Her mangled body was found with stray dogs picking at the remains.

In January, 2019, a 16-year-old girl had simply decided to go to her boyfriend’s birthday party. A week later, her body was found along a highway, her head and one of her arms chopped off. Her face may have been burned with acid. In her small town in eastern India, it is forbidden for a teenage girl to date, and the police believe the girl’s father arranged for her to be killed — supposedly to protect the family’s honour.

Just as gruesome is the story of the 30-year-old Fatima who reported to UNFPA in Cox’s Bazar in southeast coast of Bangladesh in 2017, “My sister was killed after gang rape in front of me, and they threw hot water on my body. I can’t sleep, my life is a nightmare, I can’t bear the pain of losing my sister.”

Worse, minor girls remain highly vulnerable to brutal rapes and murder. In May, the same year, a ten-month-old baby girl was allegedly raped by a family member in Jamnagar district of the western state of Gujarat. Cases of brutal rapes of minor girls abound in Bangladesh too. The rape and murder of 13-year-old Ayesha Siddiqua Sumaiya, living in Rangpur, is a case in point. A student of Class VII, she was alone in her home – her parents were at a religious function – when a gang swooped on the minor, raping and then strangling her to death.

Raghav Gaiha

Rapes reported to the police as sexual violence surged from 39 per day to 93 per day in India in 2013. In Uttar Pradesh alone, five rapes occurred in 36 hours. Even these are underestimations, for two reasons. One is the exclusion of marital rapes, which are not a prosecutable crime. No less important is the fact that barely 1 per cent of victims of sexual violence report the crime to the police.

Report on Violence Against Women (VAW) Survey 2015, Bangladesh, paints in vivid detail high incidence of different forms of violence against women. During 2014, the most common form of partner violence was controlling behaviour, experienced by more than one third (38.8%) of ever-married women, followed by emotional violence (24.2%), physical violence (20.8%), sexual violence (13.3%) and economic violence (6.7%). Rates of lifetime partner violence (any form) were highest in rural areas (74.8% of ever-married women) and lowest in city corporation areas (54.4%). Rates in urban areas outside of city corporation areas were 71.1%, slightly lower than in rural areas.

More than one quarter (27.8%) of women reported lifetime physical violence by someone other than the husband (non-partner) and 6.2% reported experiencing such violence during the last 12 months. Rates were highest among adolescents for both lifetime (30.9%) and last 12 months (11.2%) non-partner physical violence.

Most sexual violence in India occurs in marriage; 10 percent of married women report sexual violence from husbands. The reporting percentage is low in part because marital rape is not a crime in India. Adolescent wives (13–19 years) are most vulnerable, reporting the highest rates of marital sexual violence of any age group. Adolescent girls also account for 24 percent of rape cases in the country, although they represent only 9 percent of the total female population.

Barely 1 percent of victims of sexual violence report the crime to the police in India. Similar evidence is found for Bangladesh. Notions of honour are central to the discourse on rape. The rape of a daughter, sister or wife is a source of dishonour to males within the family structure. This deters the reporting of rape to the police, reinforced by a belief in the impunity of perpetrators, the fear of retaliation, and humiliation by the police through physical and verbal abuse.

One major problem with anti-rape laws is that their enforcement is feeble and painfully slow, and thus largely inconsequential as a deterrent to sexual violence.

Dominance and control over women are set in male attributes and behaviour (“masculinity”), regarded as a shared social ideal. Violence is not necessarily a part of masculinity, but the two are often closely linked, mediated by class, caste and region.

Interventions that address masculinity seem to be more effective than those that ignore the powerful influence of gender norms and systems of inequality. Effective women-focused initiatives strengthen resilience against violence by combining economic empowerment with greater awareness of rights and women’s relationship skills. Behavioural changes are, however, slower than changes in male attitudes.

In conclusion, although rise in sexual violence against women and girls is scary and abhorrent, there are grounds for optimism.

(Farhana Haque Rahman is Director General of IPS Inter Press Service; she is a communications expert and former senior United Nations official. Raghav Gaiha is (Hon.) Professorial Research Fellow, Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, England, and Visiting Scholar, Population Studies Centre, University of Pennsylvania, USA).

The challenge for achieving gender equity by rebalancing power has to be addressed in different spheres: the household, the market, and society at large.

Luis Felipe López-Calva

At the household-level, for example, women’s ability to make decisions about resource allocation or family planning are critical dimensions of empowerment; in the market, women’s access to economic opportunities, career advancement, and fair wages are of fundamental concern; at a society level, the main focus of this #GraphforThought, women’s capacity to influence decision-making is paramount to progress in terms of equity.

Fortunately, over the past several decades the face of politics has changed in many Latin American and Caribbean countries. Not only have women been elected to the highest office many times in Latin America and the Caribbean since 1990—but women representation is also expanding across multiple policy arenas from the national to the local level.

As shown in Graph 1, from (circa) 1997 to (circa) 2019 the share of women in important policy arenas, such as parliament, ministerial cabinet, and the supreme court, has nearly tripled.

However, as the graph shows—despite progress on average in LAC (the solid line) we are still well below parity level (the dotted horizontal line) and heterogeneity across countries within LAC remain substantial (by the individual country dots).

Graph 2 shows that only fifteen countries in LAC achieved “gender parity” at some point in time in at least one policy arena in the past two decades. For example, two countries in LAC (Nicaragua and Grenada) have had gender parity in the Ministerial Cabinet; two countries (Suriname and Cuba) have had gender parity in the National Parliament; while only Dominica has had gender parity in terms of Local Mayors over the past two decades.

Evidence suggests that enhancing women’s representation in the policy arena can help to bring a gender-lens to policy—for example in issue areas such as travel mobility, starting a job, equal pay, marriage and divorce, parental leave, running a business, asset management and inheritance, and pensions.

For example, research on Brazil finds that women’s representation in municipal government leads to the adoption of more “women-friendly” policies in areas such as domestic violence and childcare.

Given the importance of women’s representation in the policy arena both intrinsically and instrumentally—what can be done to accelerate its progress?

Gender quotas (laws stipulating a required share or number of women in political positions) are an increasingly common solution, and perhaps one of the main drivers of why political representation has increased.

However, even where quotas exist, informal norms may clash with formal legal structures—leading to situations in which quotas remain unimplemented or strategically circumvented.

For example, in our region, we saw this in the case of the “Juanitas” and, more recently, the “Manuelitas” in Mexico, where women ran for office on the ballot in compliance with gender quotas—only to later renounce their position and cede it to a man. Cases such as this reveal the deeply entrenched discriminatory norms and beliefs still held by so many about women’s ability to lead.

Moreover, according to the World Values Survey, on average in Latin America, 23% of people still believe that “men make better politicians than women” reflective of the region’s historical machista culture.

While women continue to face both formal and informal barriers to entering the policy arena in Latin America and the Caribbean—the region represents a positive example of change in many ways.

Not only has the share of women in politics increased, but it has coincided with the improvement of more gender-equitable development outcomes (such as women’s attainment of higher education) as well as more gender-equitable rules of the game (such as gender quota laws).

These achievements have in turn respectively helped to redistribute greater de facto and de jure power to women, which further strengthens their voice in the policy arena and subsequently their ability to make the system more responsive to women’s demands and aspirations.

If they pay for it, men tend to believe they have the right to do anything to a woman’s body. You pay for your own entertainment without a thought about who you are paying and what cause you are supporting. Money is used as an excuse for and a means to oil a machinery that generates lots of profit while keeping pimps and other perpetrators out of the reach of the law.

Jeffrey Epstein is a generous benefactor of world-renowned scientists and has intimate ties with powerful men like Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, as well as star lawyers like Alan Derschowitz. This multi-millionaire has recently been charged with sex trafficking, prompted by investigative reporting by Julie Brown. In November last year, she published in Miami Herald a three-part series exposing a vast sex trafficking operation – 80 victims were identified, some as young as 13 at the time of the alleged abuse. Furthermore, Brown revealed a government cover-up that in 2008 made it possible for Epstein to get away with an exceptionally light sentence. A “non-prosecution agreement” was secretly negotiated by prosecutor Alexander Acosta, who provided Epstein immunity from federal prosecution. After that Epstein apparently continued his sexual misconduct. Ironically, Acosta was by President Trump appointed as United States Secretary of Labor, among other tasks responsible for combatting sex-trafficking.1

How could a sexual predator of children year after year avoid being convicted for his crimes? Can wealth and influence be an answer? Soon the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit will hopefully release 2,000 pages of documents connected with the Epstein case, revealing sexual abuse by “numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well-known prime minister, and other world leaders.”2 The current President, Donald Trump, now declares:

I wasn’t a big fan of Jeffrey Epstein. That I can tell you. I didn’t want anything to do with him. That was many, many years ago. It shows you one thing — that I have good taste.3

However, in 2002 Trump stated, in a rather revealing manner, that Epstein was a terrific guy, a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.4

The case of Jeffery Epstein, as well as that of another child abuser, George Aref Nader, reveal an outrageously low bar when it comes to sexual child abuse by wealthy and well-connected offenders. Nader, a businessman, and liaison between U.S. politicians and the Arab States of the Persian Gulf has over the years repeatedly been charged with sexual exploitation of minors. During Trump´s presidential campaign Nader did at various occasions meet with the future president´s closest associates, allegedly siphoning financial support from the Middle East. On June 3, Nader was arrested by federal agents for ”bestiality and possession of child pornography.”

Such wealthy child abusers are just the tip of an iceberg. In most European cities you may find ”provocatively dressed” women lining the thoroughfares. Most of them have, after being lured from their homes in Eastern Europe or Nigeria, been forced into prostitution by pimps who lurk in the shadows, or over smartphones control their sex slaves. Even if there are many lucciole (“fireflies”, Italian slang for street prostitutes), their numbers cannot be so overwhelming that they might explain why police and authorities are so utterly incapable of saving these victims of organized crime.

One reason for the inertia may be that human trafficking is a lucrative business. In 2017, the International Labour Organization (ILO) estimated that 3.8 million persons were globally trapped in forced sexual exploitation, twenty-one percent of them being children under the age of eighteen.5 Annnual profits from this sex trade were in 2015 approximately USD 100 billion.6

Profits per victim are highest in forced sexual exploitation, which can be explained by the demand for such services and the prices that clients are willing to pay, and by the low capital investments and low operating costs associated with this activity. With a global average profit of US$ 21,800 per year per victim, this sector is six times more profitable than all other forms of forced labour.7

Most migrant prostitutes live in a world of misery and violence unknown to most of us. One of countless examples is the fate of Maria, a Romanian girl who was working as a prostitute in Spain. After her “rescue” she told a journalist that you’re alive but you’re not really existing. Not one of the men who paid to sleep with me asked me if I was there out of choice, or whether I wanted to be doing this. They didn’t care either way. People always ask: “Why didn’t you just run away or go to the police?” but they don’t know what they’re talking about. You can’t just stop a random person on the street and ask for help, because someone you love could get killed. The police in Romania are often corrupt. You think, why should it be different here?”8

Maria had been brought from Romania to Spain by a boyfriend she thought was bringing her there on a holiday trip. He drove her over the border using their EU residency cards and within 24 hours she was on the streets. Maria was told she had to pay off a debt of €20,000 before she could go back home. The traffickers threatened to kill her mother or sister if she did not pay off her debt and while she was under their control they hit her with hundreds of tiny charges; payment for clothes, rent for the corner where she worked, for condoms and sanitary towels. If she did not bring back enough money, she was beaten. This is the sordid reality for hundreds of thousands ”sex workers” around the world and you might imagine the suffering of minors forced into a world like this.

Jeffery Epstein is by New York prosecutors indicted on old and new sex trafficking charges, Acosta was forced to resign as Labor Secretary, while George Aref Nader is in a Virginian jail awaiting his trial. Are these signs that something is about to change? Hopefully, though it remains doubtful if there is any real commitment to end prostitution and sexual abuse of minors. For example, Italian law states that anyone who practices prostitution or invites to it, within a public place is punishable with imprisonment and a fine from 200 to 3,000 euros,9 though in a town like Rome the scantily dressed young women waiting for customers have not disappeared from the streets, on the contrary – their presence seems to have increased during the last years. In Spain, prostitution was decriminalized in 1995 and its domestic sex trade is currently valued at USD 26.5 billion a year, with hundreds of licensed brothels and an estimated workforce of 300,000.10

The inhibited exploitation of children and young women must be condemned and banned from society. There is no valid excuse for early marriages and sexual exploitation of minors. Wealthy and influential decision-makers covering up and even partaking in such abominable crimes against humanity must be exposed and shamed. But how?

As in all transactions, trafficking and sexual exploitation of children depend on demand and supply. When Sweden in 1999 introduced a ban of the purchase of sexual services, punishing offenders with fines, or imprisonment. The idea was that if there is no demand, there is no prostitution. Furthermore, a gender equality perspective was emphasized: buying access to another person’s body is about power, usually men’s power over women. A truism reflected by organized crime, where women and children end up as commodities to be bought and exploited. Defenders of prostitution may assert that it should be up to you if you want to prostitute yourself. However, such an argument evades the repugnant, sexual exploitation of defenseless children and ignore the glaring fact that prostitution and human trafficking are inevitably linked. Of people currently in prostitution in Sweden, three out of four are women and girls coming from poor countries.11 Prostitution cannot be reconciled with a demand for human rights. A Government believing in the equal value of all people cannot accept prostitution and even less so sexual exploitation of minors. For the vast majority, prostitution is a consequence of either poverty or violence.

It has been widely debated whether the Swedish Sex Purchase Act has been efficient. Many claim that it, together with the internet and harsh immigration laws, has made prostitution invisible by bringing it indoors and hidden within a criminal underworld, making life even worse for trafficked women and children. Nevertheless, it is a fact that Swedish attitudes towards prostitution have changed after 1999. When the Sex Purchase Act was introduced 32 percent of Swedes supported a ban against sex purchase, while in 2017 almost eighty percent supported it.12 This might be a result not only of the law but also due to an increased realization that gender equality and education may counteract prostitution and abuse of minors. However, the most effective remedy for sexual exploitation is probably general wellbeing, as well as equal and strictly applied rights for all.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/sexual-exploitation-minors-crime-humanity/feed/0The Fight to End Violence Against Women in the Asia-Pacific Regionhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/fight-end-violence-women-asia-pacific-region/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=fight-end-violence-women-asia-pacific-region
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/fight-end-violence-women-asia-pacific-region/#respondFri, 12 Jul 2019 15:31:39 +0000Caley Pigliuccihttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162410Parliamentarians met in Laos last week to discuss violence against women and girls. The meeting was organized by the Asian Population and Development Association (APDA) and hosted by the National Assembly of Laos. It was a chance to push parliamentarians to continue developing programs to protect women. For the Members of Parliament (MPs) who participated, […]

Parliamentarians met in Laos last week to discuss violence against women and girls.

The meeting was organized by the Asian Population and Development Association (APDA) and hosted by the National Assembly of Laos.

It was a chance to push parliamentarians to continue developing programs to protect women. For the Members of Parliament (MPs) who participated, it was an opportunity to demonstrate how they are already increasing protections for women and girls who face physical and sexual violence, and to commit to doing even more for their security.

The discussions held by the APDA and participating organizations, (International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), Plan International, and UN Women) focused on the specific challenges and progress made within the region.

“A majority of the countries in the region have laws in place criminalizing violence against women, including sexual violence,” Sujata Tuladhar, the Asia-Pacific Regional Gender-Based Violence Programme Specialist at the United Nations Population Fund, formally the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), told IPS.

The meeting covered topics such as ‘Where Are We Now? The Current Situation surrounding Women and Girls: Progress and Challenges in the Region,’ and ‘Gender and ICPD PoA: Empowering Women and Achieving Universal Access to Reproductive Health.’

The subjects under discussion also included the prevalence of violence and progress made in limiting that prevalence within the region.

The National Assembly hoped the meeting would give knowledge and voice to violence against women and girls. They note that “Parliamentarians play a lead role in advocacy, policy making, and monitoring in relation to the prevention of violence against women and girls and other women-related laws and policies in their countries. They can hold governments accountable for the implementation of laws and policies.”

A Cambodian Member of Parliament, Damry Ouk, told IPS the meeting was a place where Cambodia could “share with other countries about the empowerment of women [both in and outside of Cambodia].”

Ouk articulated that the particular focus for Cambodia was on “labor, education, the decision-making process (public service and political participation) and the rights-based approach that promotes choice and access to social services including institutional health deliveries.”

It states that “Domestic violence is required to be prevented in time effectively and efficiently and that it is required to take the most appropriate measures in order to protect the victims or the persons who could be vulnerable.”

This includes sexual aggression, which involves: “Violent sex, Sexual harassment, and Indecent exposures.” A further explanation of sexual harassment or violent sex is not offered. Marital rape is not specifically referred to, though it may be included in violent sex.

According a report out of UNFPA in 2017, 33% of women in the region have experienced violence in the region of Kampong Cham, Cambodia.

The UNFPA and Cambodia have been working to combat this through the Partners for Prevention Regional Joint Programme that trains participants to share knowledge to caregivers and community members to prevent violence against women and girls.

But still, according to Tuladhar, not enough progress has been made in the Asia-Pacific region to combat violence against women and children.

“While most countries in the region prohibit domestic violence, many still do not include marital rape or violence by an unmarried intimate partner,” Tuladhar said.

She says that legislation in place to protect women in countries like Cambodia can be undermined by several factors including “limited awareness and knowledge of existing laws, barriers to reporting violence, bias, unresponsive or weak capacity among service providers (health, police, judiciary, shelter, psychosocial support providers), and legal systems and courts that are insensitive to the needs of survivors of violence.”

The UNFPA and participating countries are still working on the best way to prevent violence against women, and the meeting was only a continuation of efforts.

“The evidence base on what works to prevent different forms of violence against women is still evolving,” says Tuladhar, “UNFPA has initiated several programmes in the region to change these harmful social norms and promote healthier, happier and more equal and respectful relationships between men and women.”

She said UNFPA’s project Generation Breakthrough works with children aged 10-19 to promote healthy relationships and give children the tools to be knowledgeable about and have access to their reproductive health.

Drivers of violence against women (VAW) internationally are largely similar to those in the Asia-Pacific region.

Tuladhar sees the three main drivers as harmful social norms, toxic masculinity, and patriarchal societies, factors that most regions are not immune to.

Social norms in the Asia-Pacific region play a key role for the prevalence of violence against women in the region, and this role is changing.

The percentage of women who report experiencing physical/sexual violence from a partner varies widely across the region, being anywhere from 15% to 68%.

Tuladhar explains that “social norms that under pin and perpetuate this violence are embedded very early in life.”

She reports that the Partners for Prevention, a United Nations joint program on the prevention of violence against women, showed that “experiencing or witness violence in childhood and growing with and adopting inequitable gender norms, are among the key risk factors for men’s use of violence in adulthood.”

But Tuladhar says that the Asia-Pacific region faces even more trouble because it is so disaster prone.

“During emergencies, national systems and community and social networks weaken, increasing the risk of violence, exploitation and abuse – particularly for women and girls,” she said.

45% of the world’s natural hazards occur in the Asia-Pacific region. On top of this, the region is fraught with long-term conflicts that result in high levels of refugees.

Tuladhar says that for the Asia-Pacific region in particular, “all investments in addressing violence against women and girls need to ensure a resilience framework that makes the policies, provisions, systems and services adaptable to both humanitarian and non-humanitarian settings.”

For Cambodia, Ouk sees trafficking as a big problem still in need of being eliminated.

Ouk looks to the National Committee for Counter Trafficking in Person under the Ministry on Interior for prevention.

The goal there is “to collaborate together [with national and international non-governmental organizations] for combatting human trafficking in transparent, accountable and highly effective manner responding to the commitment of the Government to suppress trafficking in persons UNFPA remains focused on prevention and increased awareness,” she said.

The meeting in Laos was a reminder to parliamentarians across the Asia-Pacific region that despite progress, there is still a need to increase protections.

Moving forward, Tuladhar believes that action must take the form of “strengthen [ing] protection mechanisms for women and girls through improving quality and accessibility of services for violence against women survivors, while ensuring the survivor’s interest and wishes are the focus.”

Early in 2018, India was shaken by the horrific details surrounding the abduction, gang rape, and murder of an 8-year-old girl in Kathua, a district in the north Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir.

The case is one of a string of brutal rapes to attract widespread media attention in a country where sexual violence against women and girls is commonplace.

According to India’s National Crime Records Bureau, around 100 sexual assaults are reported to police every day. Shocking though that is, the actual number of attacks is far higher, with a government survey finding that 99.1% of sexual violence cases go unreported, often due to pressure from family members.

Even in cases that do that make it into the criminal court system, justice for victims is often hard to obtain. In the Kathua case, the young victim was a Muslim from the poor nomadic Bakarwal tribe and the eight accused are part of the local majority Hindu community.

In many areas across India, political tensions run high between Muslims and Hindus and the public reaction to the murder investigation soon became embroiled in bitter sectarian divisions.

Widespread protests were held across the country with supporters alleging the men were innocent targets in an anti-Hindu plot instigated by biased Muslim investigators.

Numerous attempts were made to disrupt the police investigation and thwart legal processes. Some even resorted to death threats and attacks against the prosecution lawyers, witnesses, and victim’s family.

The Bakarwal community which they were members of came under sustained attack and the family was forced to flee the village where the assault occurred.

The situation became so dangerous that the Supreme Court decreed that a fair trial could not take place in Jammu and the case was moved to Pathankot in the neighboring state of Punjab to ensure impartiality in the legal process.

Against this backdrop, the judgment of the Special Court on 10 June 2019 came as a relief to many. Six out of the seven men charged were found guilty, with three sentenced to life in prison for gang-rape and murder, and three given five years for destroying evidence in order to protect the perpetrators. A seventh man was acquitted and an adolescent is yet to stand trial.

On a positive note, the Special Court pronounced judgment within a year of starting the trial, which is a rare achievement in India’s overburdened criminal justice system. While this is definitely laudable, the fact that justice was finally delivered (subject to appeal) in the Kathua case must not overshadow the many obstacles that had to be surmounted in reaching this acceptable conclusion.

Rather, it should be seen as an illustration of the many impediments faced by thousands of survivors of sexual violence across India, especially those from marginalized communities including Muslims, Dalits, and Adivasis.

Unfortunately, the speedy and effective justice delivered by the Special Court in Pathankot does not represent the experiences of the vast majority of survivors, and a fair and swift trial in cases of sexual violence remains the exception, rather than the norm.

In 2016 – the last year for which official statistics are available – there were 133,000 cases of sexual violence pending trial and conviction rates remain abysmally low.

The Unnao rape case is another recent high profile example in which a victim from a marginalized group is pitted against those who are more powerful. In this instance, an elected official from the ruling government party stands accused, alongside others including his driver, of raping a girl from the Dalit community.

The rape survivor attempted to set herself on fire in front of the state Chief Minister’s residence merely to get her criminal complaint registered. Her legal battle is ongoing and a criminal complaint for fraud has been filed against her by the parent of one of the men charged with rape in the case.

Meanwhile, her father was taken into police custody, allegedly after he was assaulted by supporters of the accused, and died shortly after, with a medical examination finding injuries consistent with him having been beaten.

So whilst we celebrate the verdict in the Kathua case, we must remember that every day in India, women and girls who have experienced sexual violence and assault are confronted with intimidation, threats, and coercion that inhibits them from reporting their violation or forces them into settling or dropping their cases.

Facing even greater obstacles to accessing justice are those who are subjected to additional discrimination on the grounds of class, caste, religion, or disability.

In 2014, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) expressed concern about the escalation of rapes against women and girls in India, particularly on the basis of caste, and the downplaying by key state officials of the grave criminal nature of gender-based sexual violence.

The situation has, however, failed to improve. In April 2018, over 600 academics from India and abroad joined together to write an open letter to the Indian government, pointing out the rapes and lynchings appeared to be a targeted campaign against minorities and expressing anguish over the lack of action by the Indian government.

India’s criminal justice system remains inaccessible and insensitive to most survivors of sexual violence. These survivors face barriers in getting their cases registered with the police, have inadequate legal support, and are forced to wait years to have their cases heard.

Immediate, systemic change is needed to ensure expeditious trials and day-to-day hearing of cases, such as took place in the Kathua trial. Justice needs to be done and be seen to be done so that all survivors of sexual violence can place their faith in the legal system, safe in the knowledge that they will be heard and their claims treated seriously.

The onus is now on the Indian government to move beyond token action and ensure that the criminal justice system is responsive to survivors needs and is equipped to handle the high volume of sexual violence cases that are currently pending.

To achieve positive systemic change, state officials should work in close cooperation with civil society organizations, activists, and survivors who can provide invaluable insight and expertise.

Better implementation of existing laws, the introduction of much needed procedural reforms, and clearing the large backlog of cases pending in criminal courts, are all key. So is handling sexual violence cases with greater sensitivity, a more accountable police force, and bigger budgetary allocation by the government to end gender-based violence.

This includes giving sufficient funding to women’s rights organizations that are delivering vital support services at the grassroots to women and girls.

There is much to be done but if these important and long overdue improvements can be implemented, it means something positive can come from the tragedy of the Kathua case.

About Equality Now: Equality Now is an international human rights organization that works to protect and promote the rights of women and girls around the world by combining grassroots activism with international, regional and national legal advocacy. It’s international network of lawyers, activists, and supporters achieve legal and systemic change by holding governments responsible for enacting and enforcing laws and policies that end legal inequality, sex trafficking, sexual violence, and harmful practices such as child marriage and female genital mutilation. For more information go to www.equalitynow.org.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/06/indias-criminal-justice-system-failing-victims-sexual-violence/feed/0Put Survivors Front and Centrehttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/06/put-survivors-front-centre/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=put-survivors-front-centre
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/06/put-survivors-front-centre/#commentsThu, 20 Jun 2019 09:17:38 +0000Tharanga Yakupitiyagehttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162108Sexual violence is still all too common and continues to threaten peace and security worldwide. How can we do better? Put survivors at the centre. Marking the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict, on Jun. 19, United Nations officials as well as government and civil society representatives convened to address sexual […]

On the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict, United Nations officials as well as government and civil society representatives convened to address sexual violence and stressed the importance of a survivor-centred approach.
Pictured here is a graffiti expression in Rio de Janeiro calling for the end to violence against women. Credit: CC By 2.0/Fernando Frazão/Agência Brasil

By Tharanga YakupitiyageUNITED NATIONS, Jun 20 2019 (IPS)

Sexual violence is still all too common and continues to threaten peace and security worldwide. How can we do better? Put survivors at the centre.

Marking the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict, on Jun. 19, United Nations officials as well as government and civil society representatives convened to address sexual violence and stressed the importance of a survivor-centred approach.

“[This] is an opportunity to not only raise awareness of the need to end conflict-related sexual violence, but also to stand in solidarity with and pay homage to the survivors—women, girls, men and boys—who despite the horrors they have endured, show the determination, resolve, and unflinching courage to stand up and speak out against this scourge,” said Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict and Under-Secretary-General Pramila Patten during a panel discussion at the U.N.

Also in attendance was Amanda Nguyen, CEO and founder of Rise, a non-governmental civil rights organisation, who echoed similar sentiments, stating: “It is the most fundamental, moral responsibility of a nation to listen and to offer justice to the most vulnerable people within it. And it is the most fundamental, moral responsibility of the international community to come together and to do the same.”

“Global leaders must take sexual violence seriously, and must look at all sexual violence survivors as humans with full human dignity,” she added.

The U.N. estimates that approximately 35 percent of women—or 1.3 billion people—have experienced sexual violence. Other studies puts that figure as high as 70 percent along with numerous other men and children.

In April, the Security Council passed Resolution 2647 which recognised the need for a survivor-centred approach to prevent and respond to sexual violence with regards to non-discriminatory services and access to justice.

But how do we employ a survivor-centred approach?

Patten noted the need for survivors to have tailored assistance that meets their specific needs.

“The plight of all survivors should be the moral compass that guides our actions…survivors are not a homogeneous group. Sexual violence has many victims,” she said.

While the story of thousands of Yazidi women who experienced sexual slavery at the hands of the Islamic State (IS) made international headlines, lesser known are the cases of such violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) communities.

In 2015, the U.N. found that attacks against LGBTI individuals took place as a form of “moral cleansing” by armed groups in Iraq.

The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights found that 88 percent of LGBTI asylum-seekers and refugees from Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua were subjected to sexual and gender-based violence in their home country.

Such violence in Central America has driven migration to the north—among the first people to reach the United States in the widely reported migrant caravan in November 2018 were 85 LGBTI people.

However, specific services and attention to LGBTI communities are still sorely lacking.

Nguyen highlighted the need for access to justice and to include survivors in the drafting of legislation.

“Peace is not the absence of visible conflict. In order for there to be true peace, survivors must have access to justice. Their lives are the invisible war zones that corrode human potential and hold back the promise of a just world. Their powerlessness is our shame. This is a peace we can all help deliver,” she said.

“Nothing is more sacred than the universal right to human dignity,” she added.

After learning about the complexities in seeking justice for survivors in the U.S., Nguyen helped pass support for the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights which includes the right to not pay for a rape kit examination—which can cost as much as 2,000 dollars—and the right to not have one’s rape kit destroyed before the statute of limitation expires.

Since then, her organisation Rise has put survivors at the forefront, helping them “pen their own civil rights into existence.”

“Change happens when we decide, and we can decide to uphold the principles of fairness, equality, and justice. We can decide that no one is powerless when we come together. We can decide that no one is invisible,” Nguyen said.

Patten highlighted the transformative nature of a survivor-centred approach, stating it: “is one that gives voice and choice to the survivors, restores their agency, builds their resilience, and enshrines their experience on the historical record….by shifting power dynamics in this way, a survivor-centred approach can also be a profoundly transformative approach that reaffirms the status of the survivor as a holder of rights.”

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/06/put-survivors-front-centre/feed/1The Storm is Over, But in Southern Africa, Cyclone Idai Continues to Rage for Women and Girlshttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/06/the-storm-is-over-but-in-southern-africa-cyclone-idai-continues-to-rage-for-women-and-girls/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-storm-is-over-but-in-southern-africa-cyclone-idai-continues-to-rage-for-women-and-girls
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/06/the-storm-is-over-but-in-southern-africa-cyclone-idai-continues-to-rage-for-women-and-girls/#respondThu, 13 Jun 2019 10:07:45 +0000Edinah Masiyiwahttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162002In late March Cyclone Idai carved a path of devastation across Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Malawi. It was the deadliest cyclone to hit the region in more than a century, others have even referred to it as “Africa’s Hurricane Katrina.” More than 1,000 people were killed. Many more saw their homes, food crops, and even entire […]

In late March Cyclone Idai carved a path of devastation across Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Malawi. It was the deadliest cyclone to hit the region in more than a century, others have even referred to it as “Africa’s Hurricane Katrina.” More than 1,000 people were killed. Many more saw their homes, food crops, and even entire villages washed away.

My country, Zimbabwe, has been receiving aid from all over the world. Our citizens also have taken it upon themselves to donate toward the needs of those who survived. We may be feeling like things are getting better. But in fact, for many women and girls, they are getting worse.

We are experiencing an aspect of natural disasters that rarely receives the attention it deserves: the fact simply being female puts one at a far greater risk of suffering harm.

For example, there was a report of a 14-year-old girl who suffered a sexual assault in Chimanimani, a community in eastern Zimbabwe hit hard by the cyclone. This one case might be just the tip of the iceberg as there are women walking long distances to get to places where food and other aid is being distributed and being forced to sleep in long queues.

There also are concerns of women and girls being asked to provide sex in exchange for access to aid. Meanwhile, a UN Flash appeal report has noted the lack of privacy and lighting in camps for displaced persons, which can increase the risk of violence and transactional sex for female storm victims.

This situation is, unfortunately, not unique to Cyclone Idai.

UN Women has highlighted that there is a rise in violence, including sexual violence, against women and girls in the aftermath of a natural disaster. Just standing in a queue for food aid and other support leave women more vulnerable to sexual exploitation and, consequently, HIV infections.

Also, according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), in crisis situations one in five women of childbearing age are likely to be pregnant. There is an urgent need to ensure access to reproductive health services. Lack of services such as prenatal care and assisted deliveries, puts these women at an increased risk of life-threatening complications. Suspensions in services that provide prevention and treatment for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections also have a greater impact on women.

Right after the Idai hit, the immediate focus of aid efforts was understandably on providing food and shelter. It is now time to broaden that focus to include interventions that protect women and girls from violence, sexual exploitation, and the loss of critically needed health services

Right after the Idai hit, the immediate focus of aid efforts was understandably on providing food and shelter. It is now time to broaden that focus to include interventions that protect women and girls from violence, sexual exploitation, and the loss of critically needed health services.

For example, all actors on the ground responding to the cyclone must ensure they integrate training programs that include efforts to mitigate the risk of gender-based violence. There should be clear procedures for reporting any cases of violence and measures to protect victims who step forward from suffering retaliation.

Zimbabwe’s Civil Protection Unit also should devote resources to helping women retain access to reproductive health services. Pregnant women should be screened for complications and those at high risk—such as women who need to deliver via caesarian section—should be transferred to hospitals where emergency care is available from skilled health workers.

Women will need access to contraception to avoid unwanted pregnancies, which ultimately lead to unsafe abortions. Also, at a minimum, there should be a system in place for the timely delivery of aid so that women are not forced to sleep in a long queue just to receive assistance. And any temporary shelter should include security guards to help protect women and girls from attacks.

A natural disaster can impose terrible hardships and cyclones like Idai could become more common as climate change increases the risk of weather extremes. But while we cannot prevent these events from occurring, we can ensure that, for women and girls, storms like Idai do not continue to rage in the form of sexual violence and other neglect that greatly compounds their trauma.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/06/the-storm-is-over-but-in-southern-africa-cyclone-idai-continues-to-rage-for-women-and-girls/feed/0The Time is Now: End Sexual and Gender-Based Violencehttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/05/time-now-end-sexual-gender-based-violence/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=time-now-end-sexual-gender-based-violence
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/05/time-now-end-sexual-gender-based-violence/#respondMon, 27 May 2019 09:50:02 +0000Tharanga Yakupitiyagehttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=161773It’s time to end sexual and gender-based violence once and for all, participants of a two-day conference said. In Norway, United Nations agencies, governments and civil society convened for the first-ever thematic humanitarian conference to combat sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in humanitarian crises. The conference, which brought together representatives from 100 nations and over […]

A young girl whose family fled the Boko Haram insurgency stands in front of a tent in a camp for internally displaced persons in Maiduguri, Nigeria. Boko Haram has abducted thousands of girls and forced them into unwanted marriages and enslavement. According to the International Rescue Committee (IRC), less than one percent of humanitarian aid is spent on combating gender-based violence in crises. Credit: Sam Olukoya/IPS

By Tharanga YakupitiyageUNITED NATIONS, May 27 2019 (IPS)

It’s time to end sexual and gender-based violence once and for all, participants of a two-day conference said.

In Norway, United Nations agencies, governments and civil society convened for the first-ever thematic humanitarian conference to combat sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in humanitarian crises.

The conference, which brought together representatives from 100 nations and over 200 organisations and SGBV survivors, aimed to mobilise political and financial commitments as well as strengthen effective and multi-sectoral SGBV prevention and response.

“We cannot, and must not, pretend these atrocities are not taking place. Sexual and gender-based violence tears apart the very fabric of society, and inflicts lasting wounds on individuals and whole communities,” said Norway’s Prime Minister Erna Solberg.

“Now is not the time to stand idly by. Now is the time for action,” she added.

Worldwide, more than one-third of all women have experienced physical or sexual violence in their lifetime. While boys and men are also affected, the risk is much higher among women and girls and is particularly exacerbated in humanitarian crises.

In Nigeria, while the kidnapping of the Chibok school girls gripped international headlines in 2014, Boko Haram has and continues to kidnap women and girls for the purposes of sexual slavery and forced marriage. In this dated picture, Nigerians gathered at Unity Fountain, in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, on Apr. 30, 2014 to call on the country’s government to act quickly to find the 276 schoolgirls who were kidnapped from Chibok secondary school in northeast Borno state on Apr. 14 by Islamist extremist group Boko Haram. Credit: Mohammed Lere/IPS

In Nigeria, while the kidnapping of the Chibok school girls gripped international headlines in 2014, Boko Haram has and continues to kidnap women and girls for the purposes of sexual slavery and forced marriage. A report by the Henry Jackson Society found that Boko Haram members would forcefully impregnate women in order to produce the “next generation of fighters.”

Nadia Murad, who was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and is the UN Office on Drugs and Crime’s Goodwill Ambassador, was among thousands of Yazidi women who were kidnapped by the Islamic State.

Many are forced to be sex slaves, and reports found that IS even uses social media sites such as Facebook to sell Yazidi women as sex slaves.

While Murad was able to escape, an estimated 3,000 Yazidi women and girls are still enslaved.

While women like Murad are leading the fight against SGBV and are often the first responders in a crisis, funding is woefully inadequate.

According to the International Rescue Committee, less than one percent of humanitarian aid is spent on combating gender-based violence in crises.

However, as communities lose access to basic services and needs such as shelter, healthcare, and income, financial support and provision of services is of the utmost importance.

In 2019, an estimated 140 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance. Of these, approximately 35 million are women and girls of reproductive age.

“When I meet survivors I ask them what could have been done to prevent what happened to you, and they tell me things like a stove. In South Sudan, [they said] we have to go out of the protected civilian site to go fetch wood and that’s when we get raped,” said UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict Pramila Patten.

In South Sudan, at least 175 women and girls experienced sexual and physical violence between September and December 2018 alone. Of these cases, 64 were girls, some as young as eight years old.

One woman recounted her experience after being raped on three separate occasions while walking to or from food distribution sites, stating: “We women do not have a choice…if we go by the main road, we are raped. If we go by the bush, we are raped…we avoided the road because we heard horrible stories that women and girls are grabbed while passing through and are raped, but the same happened to us. There is no escape—we are all raped.”

“We really need to listen to survivors. They have both a role to play in prevention and response,” Patten added, pointing to the need to address root causes of structural gender inequality and discrimination.

With regards to response, it is essential for survivors to receive health and psychosocial services as well as a safe space to heal, many said.

However, an increase in funding for SGBV prevention and response is sorely needed as well as support for local women’s organisations who are at the forefront of crisis response.

Recently, 350 Somali women leaders jointly called for zero tolerance for gender-based violence and the urgent passage of the Sexual Offences Bill which would be the country’s first dedicated SGBV-related legislation.

“We need to address the call for justice for survivors, we need to support women working closely with survivors,” said Somali Minister of Women and Human Rights Development Deqa Yasin Hagi Yusuf.

“We will return from this conference with even more energy to strengthen our legal and institutional framework to tackle SGBV,” she added.

The UN Population Fund’s Executive Director Natalia Kanem also stressed how crucial partnerships are and pledged to follow through with the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit’s commitment to provide 25 percent of funding to local and national responders by 2020.

“Support women and girls to rebuild their lives, to regain their dignity, and to feel safe and secure amidst crisis…Let the woman decide, let the girl decide,” Kanem said.

By the end of the conference, 21 donors committed 363 million dollars over the next two years.

“We are at a turning point. We have done something new, we thought out of the box, and I think we have all given something out of the ordinary. We all wanted this to work and we did,” said Minister of Foreign Affairs of Norway Ine Eriksen Søreide in her closing remarks.

“I am absolutely confident we will be able to sustain this momentum…we have the majority, and we can make the changes…now the hard work starts,” she added.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/05/time-now-end-sexual-gender-based-violence/feed/0SENT FOR HOUSE WORK: MANY TRICKED INTO SEX WORKhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/05/sent-house-work-many-tricked-sex-work/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sent-house-work-many-tricked-sex-work
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/05/sent-house-work-many-tricked-sex-work/#respondFri, 24 May 2019 12:50:59 +0000Zyma Islamhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=161754Little-educated women from remote villages find themselves sold as sex-workers in the Middle East, because neither the government nor recruiting agencies can authenticate foreign employers seeking housemaids. Her home is two boat rides away from central Narsingdi—first, a boat drops you off on the outermost banks of the char, and then after crossing half a […]

Little-educated women from remote villages find themselves sold as sex-workers in the Middle East, because neither the government nor recruiting agencies can authenticate foreign employers seeking housemaids.

Her home is two boat rides away from central Narsingdi—first, a boat drops you off on the outermost banks of the char, and then after crossing half a mile across the sandy islet, a smaller dinghy takes you down a canal that feeds into the body of char. On either side of the sediment-heavy canal is pure unadulterated beauty—long sandy banks that get overridden with the tall grassy kashful in autumn, followed by lush green woodlands deeper inland. The only other traffic in the canal are families of waddling ducks and the rare clique of kids splashing about. The dinghy drops you at a place where you get your first glimpse of a paved road—that too, one that is barely wide enough to fit a single battery-run three-wheeler that you have to take all the way to the very end of the road. From there her home is once again a half mile away across fields.

Her landless parents work as sharecroppers on other people’s fields where the going-rate is Tk 60 per day, making their family “ultra-poor” in academic terms. As a result, neither Kohinur, nor her younger brothers and sisters have completed even primary school. Scat trails around the house points out that the family practices open defecation.

So, when this teenager was approached a local broker named Badol, offering her a job as a housemaid with a Tk 18,000 monthly salary in Saudi Arabia, her parents found no reason to say no. “We thought she was going to the land of Makkah and Madina, she was going to be close to Allah, so we chose to send her,” says her mother, a woman who is barely in her forties, but looks decades older as a result of a life of hard labour.

Kohinur was stuffed into a head-to-toe black burkha to get her passport photo taken. The tiny nervous face peering through the burkha’s visor in her official portrait, was passed off as a 26-year-old married woman with two children in her passport, because it is not legal to send any woman under the age of 25 abroad. Then, clutching her fabricated passport, the teenager left her pristine homeland on a town-bound boat loaded with harvest, livestock, farmers and traders—the only vessels large enough to ply the Meghna river.

Atiyah was sold to a brothel in Lebanon by brokers of a government accredited recruiting agency.

Her recruiting agency, M/S Biplob International, secured a work clearance for her from the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET), and her details were uploaded to a database run by the Saudi government. They then matched her up with an employer who said he was looking for a housemaid. Kohinur flew out on October 30, 2018.

But once she reached Saudi Arabia, she realised that the house was not a family home; it was a brothel.

“They traded her like we trade goats and cattle,” says Kohinur’s mother, “Every day in the evening, men would come to the home to take her and return her by the morning.” Sometimes the customers took her for days, and one even kept her for a month.

“They beat her twice a day with wound up cables. She begged one of the other girls in the brothel to let her use a phone to call us. We informed the broker Badol that our daughter is in a brothel, and to prove that, she had to manage a video call. The girls helped her,” describes her mother.

The broker demanded Tk 45,000 from the family to bring back the girl. “We loaned the money from a moneylender at a steep interest,” says the mother. Kohinur finally came back on January 13, 2019.

“We got her married last month to a construction worker, before word spread that she was made to do sex work in Saudi Arabia. She is not 18 yet. Such is the luck of my daughter, that her husband was too poor to even buy her a wedding sari. They gave her a normal cotton sari, and a cotton salwar kameez set,” laments the mother.

Illustration: SHARARA ZAHEEN

Just a few miles away, on the same char, another ultra-poor family’s daughter was also sent to Saudi Arabia to do sex work. 25-year-old Armin* and her two children were abandoned by her husband, leaving her to live with her parents. Her father barely scrapes a living by picking peanuts on others’ land. Her home is a broken-down one-roomed shanty shared with their livestock. Cooking fuel made with dried cow dung and grass were stacked up to the ceiling by the foot of the bed, making the entire room smell—but they have nowhere else to keep it.

“They threw my daughter off the second floor of the brothel because she refused to give in to their demands,” says Armin’s mother. Armin survived the fall, but now has a crippled arm and a foot. The doctors had to surgically insert a rod into her leg to mend the fracture. A long scar extends from her upper arm to her shoulder, where the skin had split upon impact. Another scar nestles between her eyebrows on her forehead. The fall also broke two of her front teeth. A disabled, penniless Armin was deported from Saudi Arabia and sent back to Bangladesh on June 8, 2018.

Both Kohinur and Armin had gone through legal channels. The BMET had cleared them for work. A Saudi government-accredited recruiting agency from Saudi Arabia had uploaded the details of their employers to a database system that is accessible to the recruiting agencies in Bangladesh and the BMET—so both of them were aware of whom the women were being sent to. How is it that after Kohinur and Armin were legally sent to Saudi Arabia, they ended up doing sex work?

It seems as if every single person and body involved in Bangladesh send these women abroad like throwing a stone in the dark and hoping it hits the target. In spite of the introduction of digital database systems for employers and microchip-enabled smartcards for workers, nobody in Bangladesh has any way to verify whether the employers are legit.

Villages where these women come from are remote, but still has shops dedicated to sending migrant workers abroad.

For example, when the government was asked how these women ended up as sex slaves, they said they are not in charge of verification of the employers.

“We do not choose the employers, it is the local recruiting agencies that coordinate with the recruiting agencies in the target country to find the employers,” said Mujibur Rahman, the director of emigration and protocol at BMET.

So, we asked Shameem Ahmed Chowdhury Noman, the secretary-general of the Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA) how it is that women are legally being sent abroad to work in brothels.

“We cannot vet the employers. That is the job of the Saudi recruiting agencies,” he says.

Meanwhile Kohinur’s recruiting agency flat out denied sending anyone by that name, although records at BMET, disclosed to this correspondent by their officials, state otherwise. “We did not send anyone by that name last year,” says the managing director, AKM Jashimuddin.

“Everyone involved in this trade is doing business but neither the government nor the recruiting agencies are willing to take responsibility,” says Shakirul Islam, chairperson of Ovibashi Karmi Unnoyon Program (OKUP), an organisation providing support to migrant workers.

“The recruiting agencies receive USD 2,000 for every woman sent to Saudi Arabia for example, so there is a monetary incentive to do business with all sorts of employers,” alleges Shariful Hasan, head of BRAC’s migration programme. According to data provided by BRAC, 1,353 female abuse survivors returned just from Saudi Arabia alone between January to December last year. Among them, five were pregnant. There are no official statistics on how many female workers returning to Bangladesh were forced to work as sex slaves.

The responsibility—as it stands—has been shifted entirely on the young, vulnerable shoulders of the women being taken in as sex slaves.

“There is only one way for us to get employers blacklisted—if an allegation gets proven in the foreign courts,” says Noman, “and for that the woman who makes the accusation must stay back in that country, and battle the case out in court. If she wins, the employer is blacklisted.”

“But activists and her family members keep pressurising us to bring them back.”

In effect, in order for Bangladeshi authorities to acknowledge an employer as a “pimp” or a sexual abuser, female migrant workers have to put their lives on hold, stay back in the country where they had been abused and engage in lengthy court battles that could last years. For this, they have to seek help from the Bangladesh consulate in that respective country.

This is a tall order for women like Kohinur and Armin. Firstly, they go abroad to salvage their families from poverty, making it impossible to stay back to fight legal battles. Secondly neither of the women even knew which city they were taken to! So how would they find the Bangladeshi embassy?

On the other hand, accusations without convictions are not enough for recruiting agencies on either side to blacklist an employer.

“If the employer is not blacklisted, there is no existing system for a recruiting agency to communicate to the other Bangladeshi recruiting agencies that a certain employer runs a brothel, instead of a family home,” continues Noman, “so they may end up sending more women to the same person.” Evidently, crowdsourcing information does not hold much stock in this industry.

“Besides the woman could be lying,” concludes Noman, stating that recruiting agencies have had to deal with cases of false allegations.

The scenario does not get better.

“When the woman chooses to return back home, she has to sign a document saying that she is terminating the employment. We are then legally obligated to either return the USD 2,000 we were paid for recruiting the girl or send another woman,” states Noman. He assures that recruiting agencies forgo the money rather than sending another woman to the same house.

Unfortunately, in practice, that money paid by the recruiting agency to employers to release the woman often comes from the families themselves—so not only do the women have to endure the torture, but they also have to pay crippling amounts of money to secure their release. When 20-year-old Atiyah’s* husband received a call from Jordan that barely lasted two minutes, but constituted of his wife crying and saying “they have sent me to a bad house” over and over again, he knew he must get her back.

The construction worker from a village in Baghata, Narsingdi loaned Tk 1,36,000 (approximately USD 1,700) from a moneylender and handed it over to the broker who had sent his wife to Lebanon. Atiyah was brought back 18 days after she was sent to Lebanon, but unfortunately the family’s expenses weren’t over yet.

As a result of the gang-rape and torture Atiyah was subjected to, her health was affected and she suffered gynaecological complications. “I came back in 2017, and got pregnant the same year, but something went wrong with the pregnancy and they had to surgically remove a part of the body where the baby grows,” says Atiyah quietly.

Her medical records show that her right fallopian tube ruptured, and had to be surgically removed. “The doctor told me I cannot have a baby anymore,” she adds. The surgery cost them Tk 70,000, and this, too, her husband had to loan from a moneylender.

“The torture there was horrible. I was not given any food to eat—not a single grain of rice. I was only given alcohol. I survived on the chanachur snacks my husband had packed for me before I left for Lebanon. I ate barely a morsel a day to make the packet last. In that state, I had to dress up in just underwear to serve up to four men at a time every night,” describes Atiyah.

“And now my father and brothers are blaming me, saying it was my fault and that I had gone abroad to do sex work, so they cut me off from my inheritance,” says the survivor.

But even under sky-high debt, the survivor is not without hope—a sobering reminder of the patience and endurance of migrant workers. When asked what she wants to do with her life now, Atiyah starts to talk about her talents. “I am very good at rearing chickens! Maybe I could try my hand at that? See I have two already!” she grinned. Her beautiful large black eyes, which were glassy and dead while talking about her time in Lebanon, now lit up her entire face.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/05/sent-house-work-many-tricked-sex-work/feed/0Does God Hate Women? A Bangladeshi Murder Casehttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/05/god-hate-women-bangladeshi-murder-case/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=god-hate-women-bangladeshi-murder-case
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/05/god-hate-women-bangladeshi-murder-case/#respondMon, 20 May 2019 18:49:12 +0000Jan Lundiushttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=161691On 6 April, nineteen-year-old Nusrat Jahan Rafi was by a fellow student brought to the roof of their school. She told Nusrat that a friend of hers was beaten up there. Unknown to Nusrat, Moni who was four months pregnant at the time, had earlier bought burqas and gloves for three of the men who […]

On 6 April, nineteen-year-old Nusrat Jahan Rafi was by a fellow student brought to the roof of their school. She told Nusrat that a friend of hers was beaten up there. Unknown to Nusrat, Moni who was four months pregnant at the time, had earlier bought burqas and gloves for three of the men who were awaiting them on the roof. Another girl, Umma, was already there beckoning Nusrat to come up. However, when Nusrat entered the roof Umma threw her down and tied her legs. The burqa-dressed men surrounded the defenseless Nusrat, demanding her to withdraw accusations of sexual harassment against the schools´headmaster. When Nusrat refused to give in, one of the men held her head down, while another poured kerosene over her and set her on fire.

The killers wanted it to look like suicide, but were surprised during the murderous act and fled the scene. Nusrat was rushed to hospital with 80 percent of her body severely burned. In the ambulance, she recorded through her brother´s mobile phone what had happened. He had ever since his sister approached the police on 27 March to raise her complaint, been worried about her safety. When Nusrat returned to school to sit her final exams her brother accompanied her, but he was not allowed to enter and did not see his sister until she was brought out of school with lethal injuries. Nusrat died four days later and was followed to her grave by thousands of shocked citizens from her small hometown of Feni, 160 km south of Dakha. Even if it was committed in a madrassa, a Muslim school, it is doubtful whether the murder actually had anything to do with religion. It was more likely connected with power, manipulation, and corruption.

Siraj-ud-Daula, the headmaster accused of inciting the murder, had molested Nusrat at least three times before her family told her to file a sexual harassment case. It was far from the first time Siraj-ud-Daula was accused of sexual assault and unethical behaviour. Three years before Nusrat´s accusation Siraj-ud-Daula had after several allegations been expelled from Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamist political party. However, he joined the Awami League instead, becoming a member of its local administration. It has been reported that the ruling party accepted Siraj-ud-Daula after it had received ”some financial benefits through him.” Police witnesses stated that over the last 18 years, at least 15 locally influential people had received money and gifts from the regularly incriminated Siraj-ud-Daula.[1]

Siraj-ud-Daula´s local influence may have been one reason for the police´s reluctance to act upon Nusrat´s complaint. The local police force ought to have provided her with a safe environment to recall her traumatic experiences. Instead, the officer in charge filmed her statement with his mobile phone and later leaked the video to local media. The police first stated that Nusrat´s complaint was ”no big deal” and delayed the arrest of Siraj-ud-Daula, who after being taken into custody even was able to mobilize a protest demanding his release. One of the accused murderers, Hafez Abdul Kader, was a teacher by the madrassa headed by Siraj-ud-Daula. This teacher had earlier been active in Islami Chhatra Shibir, the student wing organization of Jamaat-e-Islami.

The murder of Nusrat and its connection with corrupt political and religious leaders raises questions about rampant misogyny, patriarchalism, the connection between religion and politics and many other sensitive issues that for decades have plagued Bangladesh. Nevertheless, massive demonstrations following upon the murder indicate a strong tradition of diversity and inclusion, a will to progress and change. The story of Bangladesh is not the story of a secular country turning to Muslim radicalism, it is about a country that against all odds has survived almost unbelievable hardships and appears to be prepared to take a stand against religious bigotry, and hopefully rampant corruption as well.[2] Twenty-three persons have been arrested in connection with the heinous crime in Feni, several police officers have been transferred and suspended from service, while Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has visited Nusrat´s family, promising that ”None of the culprits will be spared from legal action.”

Sheikh Hasina´s political career may serve as an illustration to Bangladesh´s difficult transformation since its dependence in 1971, which followed upon a nine-month war that have caused three million deaths, including the mass murder of civilians. The numbers of victims, through declassified documents from the Pakistan government provide clear evidence of a campaign of genocide ordered from the top down. The scars have not been properly healed and religious conflicts tend to rip them open.

Awami League, the party headed by Sheikh Hasina´s father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, won the general elections of 1973. Two years later members of the armed forces murdered Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his family, including his wife, two adult sons, their newly wed wives and their 8 year old small son. Being in Germany at the time saved the lives of Sheikh Hasina her sister Sheikh Rehana The murders were part of a coup mainly carried out by soldiers with a Pakistani training, who disliked Sheikh Mujibur Rahman´s move towards a secular form of government. Among other actions, he had been instrumental in banning Jamaat-e-Islami, a movement that had opposed the independence of Bangladesh.[3]

Sheikh Hasina, one of the world´s most powerful women, has been in and out of power, in and out of prison. She has survived assassination attempts. Several members of her party have been murdered and its meetings interrupted by lethal grenade attacks.

It is no coincidence that Feni´s madrassa was established by Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamist political movement founded in British India to develop “an ideology based on a modern revolutionary conception of Islam,” intending to educate an elite able to amend ”erroneous ways of thinking” from the top down.[4] About 90 percent of Bangladesh´s population define themselves as Muslims and the nation´s various governments have been involved in a precarious balancing act involving an extreme fundamentalist minority and a huge population striving for general well-being.

Sheikh Hasina´s administrations have on several occasions tried to curb upheavals fuelled by Islamist opposition. For example, in 2010 the governing Awami League established a war crimes tribunal to address atrocities perpetrated during the War of Independence. Several Muslim leaders were convicted, causing a wave of Islamist terrorism, peaking between 2013 and 2016 when secularist activists, homosexuals, and religious minorities were viciously targeted. The Government’s eventual successful crackdown in June 2016 resulted in the arrest of 11,000 persons, within a little more than a week´s time.

However, horrific incidents like the one in Feni indicate a fault line in the Bangladeshi Constitution stating that in family matters religious law trumps civil law. Thus, when it comes to divorce, inheritance and child custody, the law overwhelmingly favours men. This basic differentiation filters through the entire society, making violence against women almost omnipresent, though hidden and largely unpunished. Nevertheless, progress is being made. Girls and boys have achieved parity in primary school admissions. After decades of investment in public health, great strides have been taken in reducing maternal mortality and increasing access to village-level health programs.

There is hope that a general misconception that religion is beyond respect for human rights will eventually disappear. Fundamentalism indicates an avoidance of personal responsibility by clinging to what is assumed to be the literal words of God. However, any text is subject to human interpretation. Accordingly, human fallibility tends to distort what is written, making it impossible to irrationally adhere to words of God. All that may be achieved is a limited human interpretation of God’s will. Religious experience is dynamic and effervescent and furthermore influenced by politics, power, and greed. It cannot be bottled up and fixed for all times. Any offender of human rights has thus to be judged in accordance with human law and not by what is perceived as divine law. Accordingly, those who instigated and committed Nusrat´s murder, as well as those minimizing and defending their crime, should not be allowed to place judgment in what they assume to be divine justice.

[1] Information in this article is based on reporting from BBC and Dhaka Tribune.
[2] Anam, Tahmima (2016) ”´Is Bangladesh Turning Fundamentalist? – and other questions I no longer wish to answer,” The Guardian 16 May.
[3] Jamaat-e-Islami was re-established after the coup.
[4] Adams, Charles J. (1983) “Maududi and the Islamic State,” in Esposito, John L. (ed.) Voices of Resurgent Islam. Oxford University Press.

Jan Lundius holds a PhD. on History of Religion from Lund University and has served as a development expert, researcher and advisor at SIDA, UNESCO, FAO and other international organisations.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/05/god-hate-women-bangladeshi-murder-case/feed/0Unlocking the Power of Womenhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/05/unlocking-power-women/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=unlocking-power-women
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/05/unlocking-power-women/#respondWed, 15 May 2019 12:17:38 +0000Katja Iversenhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=161639Katja Iversen is the President and CEO of Women Deliver*

This June, thousands will flock to Vancouver for a global dialogue on how to accelerate progress for girls and women under the banner of power, progress and change.

At the Women Deliver 2019 Conference, the largest in the world for gender equality, delegates will come together to unlock power at three levels: individual, structural, and collective. They will plan for action around how to pull these levers to drive gender parity, especially with regard to women’s economic empowerment.

And not a day too soon. Just last December, the World Economic Forum reported that while the global gender gap is slowly narrowing, the economic participation and opportunity gap stands at 58 percent. Put simply, it will take around 202 years for women to reach economic equality.

The costs of inequality are all of ours to bear. The World Bank estimates that nations leave as much as $160 trillion on the table when women don’t fully participate in national economies.

And we also know the opposite to be true. Research shows that women reinvest more of their income in their families, including in their children’s health and education, than men do—creating a ripple effect that benefits present and future generations.

All this raises an urgent question for decision-makers: If equal economic opportunity is a clear economic and social win for all, why wait 202 years to reap its benefits?

Fortunately, we do not have to wait, provided we take action. The economic gender gap is deep rooted and long standing, which means we have had some years to cook up and test out solutions. The results?

We have learned that if we leverage the power of individuals, structures, and movements to push for girls’ and women’s equal economic participation, we get ourselves a step closer to a gender equal world—along with its dividends.

At the individual level, women around the world are resilient economic agents, overcoming gender-based roadblocks to economic security for themselves and their families every day. Policies and investments that increase their agency over career and finances could go a long way to boost women’s economic empowerment.

And what does a woman with individual agency over career and finances look like? First, she must have access to sexual and reproductive health and rights, including modern contraception and safe abortion—because when a girl or woman can decide whether and when to have children, the chance that she will finish school, get and keep a job, and participate in the economy is much greater.

She also has access to free quality education, including at the secondary and tertiary level. And she has a legal right to resources, including but not limited to the right to access, control, own, and inherit land and capital.

At the structural level, we have also seen tangible progress when governments and corporations move beyond lofty statements on gender equality and reflect their commitments in their budgets and policies.

In 2017, Canada launched its Feminist International Assistance Policy, which targets gender equality in the global fight against poverty. Gender budgeting of this sort—or the practice of earmarking money towards policies that are explicitly mindful of their impact on girls and women – is gaining momentum globally.

Corporations have also taken steps to leverage their structural power to lift women up. Global giants like Procter & Gamble, for example, have implementedpay equality across all levels, from junior-level employees to top executives.

Companies investing in family-friendly, gender-responsive policies have been rewarded with high returns on their investments, including better worker attendance and increased productivity.

Finally, in an era when women-led and women-focused movements are shaking up the status quo, we have seen the ‘power of the many’ rise to demand work environments and conditions where women can thrive. Movements such as MeToo, #BalancetonPorc, Ni Una Menos, and many others have exposed the magnitude of sexual harassment, misogyny, and gender-based violence in workplaces globally.

Through critical debates, these movements have sparked energy and action to end harassment in the workplace, pay women their fair share, and push for family-friendly policies that allow half the workforce equal rights and opportunity as both workers and earners.

Meanwhile, projects like Girls Who Code, W2E2, and Samasource—and initiatives like International Day of Women and Girls in Science—have surfaced globally to secure a place for women in the future of work. This call to action to nurture female talent in Science, Technology, Education and Math (STEM) is vital, since the fields expecting the most growth are known for low female representation.

For example, girls and women make up only 22% of the AI workforce, lag behind men in digital fluency, and are less likely to study science, technology, engineering, and math. This comes with serious consequences for women’s ability to enter, remain, and advance in the workforce of today and tomorrow.

Every day, women all over the world show that they can build informal and formal businesses out of limited capital and resources. The benefits of investing in their access and control over economic opportunity are immense.

The reforms to help women get there are very much on the table—our job is now to create the momentum to scale them up.

This year’s Women Deliver conference will ask participants to reflect on how they can and will use their power for good. The world will be watching. How will you use yours?

*The original article appeared in Finance and Development published by the International Monetary Fund (IMF)

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/05/unlocking-power-women/feed/0Campaign to Whitewash Saudi Arabia’s Image Does Little for Women in the Kingdomhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/05/campaign-whitewash-saudi-arabias-image-little-women-kingdom/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=campaign-whitewash-saudi-arabias-image-little-women-kingdom
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/05/campaign-whitewash-saudi-arabias-image-little-women-kingdom/#respondWed, 08 May 2019 15:05:14 +0000Uma Mishra-Newbery and Kristina Stockwoodhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=161544Uma Mishra-Newbery is the Interim Executive Director of Women’s March Global, which is a founding member of the Free Saudi Women Coalition & Kristina Stockwood works with the Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR), which is a founding member of the Free Saudi Women Coalition.

Amid a high-profile public relations campaign to convince the world just how much the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is modernising – highlighted in last year’s lifting of the ban on women driving – Saudi authorities continue their relentless persecution of women human rights defenders.

A trial that has drawn international condemnation and intensified criticism of the country’s human rights record, features nine women who were arrested in 2018 for campaigning for the right to drive and an end to the Kingdom’s male guardianship system.

Since April 4, 2019, Saudi Arabia has arrested at least an additional 13 writers and bloggers, including two dual Saudi-American citizens and a pregnant feminist, in apparent retaliation against supporters of the detained women activists.

The past 12 months have been anything but the modern, revolutionary times promoted by Vision 2030 and Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman, who has led a brutal crackdown on civil society and women’s rights since he came to power. Dissent is absolutely not tolerated.

Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi – who had become a critic of the Crown Prince – was viciously murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The Saudi-led war on Yemen has continued, prompting numerous countries to halt arms sales to Saudi Arabia, including Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands and Finland. Weapons and armoured vehicles have also been used to violently suppress public protests in Saudi Arabia.

Activist Israa Al-Ghomgham became the first woman activist to face the death penalty after she was arrested for peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations in 2015. While she is no longer at risk of capital punishment, she remains imprisoned and her co-defendants still could face death simply for protesting.

One of the most glaring human rights violations of the past year, however, has been the unlawful imprisonment and subsequent torture, sexual assault, and solitary confinement of numerous women human rights defenders.

Male guardianship has been further entrenched by a recently popularized app allowing men to track and control the location and travel of the women under their control (this app is readily available on Apple and Google Play, by the way). Rather than protesting the app, we should pressure Saudi Arabia to end the guardianship system.

Last May, Saudi Arabia arrested a dozen women’s rights activists just weeks before the Saudi government was set to lift its ban on women drivers. Most of these activists had been actively working for years to help end the guardianship system, and to lift the driving ban, publicly touted as part of the Crown Prince’s reform plan.

But before the ban was lifted, they received phone calls telling them to keep their mouths shut and just enjoy the fact that they could now drive. In June and July 2018, at least another eight defenders were arrested, bringing the total to over twenty known women’s rights defenders in detention.

Among the women who remain in prison since last year are Loujain Al-Hathloul, Nouf Abdelaziz, Hatoon Al-Fassi, Samar Badawi, Nassima Al-Sadah, Mohammed Al-Bajadi, Amal Al-Harbi, and Shadan Al-Enazi.

Not all of them have been brought to trial yet, and others can’t be named. Of great concern is that some reports put the number of rights defenders detained since Prince Salman came to power in the thousands.

According to numerous testimonies, some of the women detained last year were repeatedly tortured by electric shocks, floggings and waterboarding, leaving them shaking uncontrollably and unable to walk or sit properly and with bruises and scratches covering their thighs, faces and necks.

In addition to torture, several detainees have been subject to sexual assault and sexual harassment. At least one of the detained women attempted suicide multiple times.

On March 13, nine women’s rights defenders were finally brought to court with two other women. But none were given access to any legal counsel until the second session of the trial two weeks later.

Foreign reporters and diplomats were not allowed in court. The women found out that confessions signed under duress during interrogation would be used against them.

On March 28, 2019, three women were temporarily released, including long-time women’s rights campaigner and academic Aziza Al-Youssef and Eman Al-Nafjan, who blogs on women’s rights.

Cheering this release only contributes to the Saudi propaganda cycle. It doesn’t change the fact that they were severely tortured while arbitrarily detained for months, nor that they are still charged for their women’s rights activism and will be back in court in early June.

Not to mention that Al-Youssef’s son Salah Al-Haidar was among those arrested this April, along with feminist writer Khadijah Al-Harbi, who is pregnant.

At the second session of the trial, the judge indicated that more women on trial would be freed on bail yet on April 3, the women were again in court, and remained imprisoned. Instead, another round of arrests began the following day.

The next hearing and possible verdict for the eight women on trial who have not yet been freed was scheduled for April 17 but inexplicably cancelled.

Saudi Arabia continues to act with impunity – facilitated by the silence of the international community until recently. The actions of the Kingdom have been largely swept under the rug, disguised by the claim that it is reforming and modernizing.

Saudi Arabia is still a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC), allowed a seat at the table despite their blatant disregard for human rights. This must change.

Recognising the jarring absence of action by international actors, civil society has filled the gap by actively calling for accountability of Saudi authorities and ensuring that the women’s rights activists who have been detained remain constantly in the public eye.

The #FreeSaudiWomen coalition, a group of seven NGOs advocating for the immediate and unconditional release of all Saudi women human rights defenders, created a petition which has been signed by nearly a quarter of a million people.

Continuous awareness of the human rights violations in Saudi Arabia is the first step. But there is more that can be done: acting to hold accountable governments, companies, performers and sporting groups that continue to engage with Saudi Arabia’s white-washing campaign, is the other.

Unless a systemic act of solidarity is enacted, Saudi Arabia will continue to use its economic and military power to suppress the fundamental civic freedoms of women’s rights activists in the country. On so many levels, we should be very scared that the United States thinks it’s okay to sell nuclear power technology to Saudi Arabia – with six deals recently approved secretly.

The Saudi crisis involves numerous key players and a solution might seem unattainable, but a world that does not act when a country arbitrarily imprisons and tortures its citizens sets a terrifying precedent for leaders across the globe.

As a start, 36 UN Member states issued a statement at the UN HRC’s session this March calling for the immediate release of the women’s rights defenders and an investigation into the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

While they should be lauded for their actions, together with other stakeholders, member states to the UN need to up the ante: issue a full resolution at the next session of the Council holding Saudi Arabia accountable.

Uma Mishra-Newbery is the Interim Executive Director of Women’s March Global, which is a founding member of the Free Saudi Women Coalition & Kristina Stockwood works with the Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR), which is a founding member of the Free Saudi Women Coalition.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/05/campaign-whitewash-saudi-arabias-image-little-women-kingdom/feed/0West Africa’s Fine Line Between Cultural Norms and Child Traffickinghttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/05/west-africas-fine-line-cultural-norms-child-trafficking/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=west-africas-fine-line-cultural-norms-child-trafficking
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/05/west-africas-fine-line-cultural-norms-child-trafficking/#respondFri, 03 May 2019 14:26:51 +0000Issa Sikiti da Silvahttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=161447 This is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Riana Group.

Poverty plays a huge role in the trafficking of women and girls in West Africa. Credit: CC by 2.0/Linda De Volder

By Issa Sikiti da SilvaCOTONOU, Benin, May 3 2019 (IPS)

On a bus in Cotonou, Benin’s commercial capital, four Nigerian girls aged between 15 and 16 sit closely together as they are about to embark on the last part of their journey to Mali, where they are told that their new husbands, whom they never have met, await them.

They started off from their homes in Eastern Nigeria where their parents had reportedly agreed that they be “commissioned” to become the wives of Nigerian men living in Mali.

“Four compatriots asked me to bring them young wives because they want to get married. I’m sure they will be happy,” a human smuggler, who only identifies himself as Wiseman, tells IPS as the bus prepares to depart for Bamako, Mali’s capital. IPS is not allowed to speak to the young girls, who appear anxious.

When asked if the girls’ parents are aware they have to travel to Mali, Wiseman says: “I negotiated with them and gave them something as a down payment for their dowries, which will surely help them [the parents] start a small business or buy seeds for farming. These kids should count themselves lucky because they will work and perform wives’ duties, so their lives should improve big time.”

But nobody knows the real intentions of the men who ”commissioned” these girls. Or if they exist.

Pathfinders Justice Initiative, an international non-government organisation dedicated to the prevention of modern-day sex slavery, says Nigeria is a source, transit and destination country when it comes to human trafficking with Benin City, in Nigeria’s Edo State, being an internationally-recognised sex trafficking hub.

Nigeria ranks 32 out of 167 countries with the highest number of slaves (1,38 million), according to the 2018 Global Slavery Index report. While Nigeria has the institutional framework and laws against trafficking, at least one million people are trafficked there every year, according to the country’s National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP).

NAPTIP, working in collaboration with Malian authorities, recently said that nearly 20,000 Nigerian girls were forced into prostitution in Mali. The girls were said to be working in hotels and nightclubs after being sold to prostitution rings by human traffickers.

At the end of April, Interpol announced that it rescued 216 trafficked victim—including 157 children—from Benin, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, and Togo. Interpol is part of a global task force formed to address human trafficking.

Some of the trafficking victims were working as sex workers in Benin and Nigeria, while others worked all day in markets and at various eating places. Some were as young as 11 and had been beaten, subject to abuse, and told they would never see their families again.

Forty-seven people were arrested.

“Many of the children are shipped actually into these markets to carry out forced labour. These are organised crime groups who are motivated by making money. They don’t care about the children forced into prostitution, working in terrible conditions, living on the streets, they are all after the money,” Interpol’s Director of Organised and Emerging Crime Paul Stanfield said in a video.

Benin, the transit stop for traffickers

Benin, a low-income country, has always been a transit route for west African migrants looking to irregularly make their way to Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, and finally to Europe.

The city of Cotonou appears to be a huge transit route through which women and girls trafficked to North and West Africa pass as they are transported to various countries of their destination. While Togo, Burkina Faso, Benin and Mali have laws against child trafficking, nothing covers trafficking in persons above the age of 18, according to the UNODC report. Niger has no laws against trafficking.

The Economic Community of West African States’ policy of free movement of goods and people seems to make this easier as corrupt immigration officers at border posts look away in exchange for a few euros. When IPS asks Wiseman about border controls, he brushes aside the issue, saying he knows “how to handle them”.

When asked if he is responsible for the girls’ welfare, Wiseman replies: “I’m not a social worker, I’m a businessman and a helper. I help people to get good wives and lift the girls’ families out of poverty in exchange for money. The rest is history.”

When the incident about the Nigerian girls is described to Hassan Badarou, a community-based caregiver and religious leader from Benin, he says “they could be used as sex slaves by those men or sold to crime syndicates to serve as prostitutes in Mali or even as far as in North Africa.”

“It’s a pity parents allow their children to just leave the country in exchange for a few dollars. All of this wouldn’t have happened if they weren’t poor,” he says.

Poverty, culture and child labour

Poverty plays a huge role in the trafficking of women and girls in the region. But so too does culture.

In 2014, a female friend of Suzie’s family came to collect the then 12-year-old from her home in northern Benin.

“She promised to help me attend school after working at her home for one year, but she didn’t,” Suzie tells IPS in the local language, Fon, through a translator.

“Things started to go wrong when I started to remind her about that. She stopped paying me my salary and increased the workload and cut my meals down from two to one per day. And she started beating up me every time I protested,” the 16-year-old who lives in Cotonou tells IPS.

As time went by, the women’s male family members, who lived in the same house, started to make sexual advances towards Suzie. She refused the advances but eventually ran away because she could no longer bear the situation.

No police please

When asked why she doesn’t report the incidents to the police, she says: “I can’t do that. The woman is like my aunt so I couldn’t do it as this would have brought a conflict between the women’s family and ours back home.”

Badarou, the religious leader, explains that he has mediated in cases like Suzie’s.

“If you see the way these women ill-treat these girls, it should make you cry. I have documented many cases of abuse and have tried to mediate between some of these women and the girls.”

But he’s never reported any of these cases, however abusive, to the police.

“The only thing you cannot do is to report these cases to the police. We are all brothers and sisters of this country and we believe in solving our problems in harmony and peace through dialogue. Besides, it’s not our culture to report everything to the police. I blame West African governments for allowing this thing to go on and on to the extent of becoming a cultural norm institutionalised deep in the fabric of society. It’s now hard to break it,” he says.

Badarou explains that the actions are cultural.

“In the face of this deeply-entrenched culture of ”helping each other” by ”handing over” your girls to someone well established who is living in the cities, even the United Nations and children’s organisations sometimes have no choice but to turn a blind eye. I’m not saying they are not doing anything about it, but you can’t break up someone’s culture, especially in a region such as this where grinding poverty rules,” he says.

Richard Dossou seems to agree. He tells IPS that his uncle’s friend, a father of 18 children, is looking for “Good Samaritans” from Benin to take in some of his girls as he is unable to provide for them.

“I’m planning to travel to their village to negotiate with him with a view of taking even one, not as a wife, but as a maid. Then we will see how it will lead us. We help each other like this to fend off poverty and misery in this region,” Dossou says.

While Benin’s poverty hovers at about 40 percent, a report released in 2018 by the World Poverty Clock said in Nigeria a total of 86.9 million people are living in extreme poverty.

The fine line between cultural norms and child trafficking

Asked if this West African practice of “handing over” girls is a cultural norm of lifting families out of poverty, Jakub Sobik, communications manager for London-based Anti-Slavery International, tells IPS via email: “What you describe above are cases of child trafficking, when children are being recruited or harboured with a view of exploiting them.”

“Slavery doesn’t occur in a vacuum, it is underpinned by many factors, including poverty, discrimination, lack of access to education and decent job opportunities, the lack of rule of law, as well as practices that are culturally accepted in societies,” he explains.

He says that it is often the case that parents are “deceived about the conditions their children will be offered, and send them away in a genuine belief that they will get a better chance of education and life opportunities in surroundings of cities and perhaps better-off societal circles.”

He adds that in some societies children working is culturally accepted, because it has been the norm for generations. “We have a lot to do to change that and offer children childhoods, education and opportunities in lives they deserve.”

As the bus continues on the final journey that is meant to lift the Nigerian girls out of ”poverty” to ‘’freedom”; back in Cotonou Suzie wanders the city’s dark streets hand in hand with a Zemidjan—a motorcycle taxi driver—who appears to be aged between 40 and 50 and whom she describes as her boyfriend.

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The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) http://gsngoal8.com/ is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

To be able to tackle a problem we must first recognize that it exists. When I first spoke at the United Nations Security Council in 2009, I was asked why the issue of sexual violence was even relevant to peace and security. At that time, it was not generally accepted that rape is in fact a weapon of war. Today, that statement is both widely accepted and central to the international community’s understanding of this crucial issue.

Last week, I spoke yet again at the Security Council in response to Germany’s call for a new resolution on women, peace and security. After extensive negotiations and compromise relating to sexual and reproductive health for victims of sexual violence in conflict, the resolution was passed.

Thirteen countries voted in favor. China and Russia abstained. This is now the ninth resolution in a series, which addresses sexual violence in conflict and the inclusion of women in building peace.

Although I would have greatly preferred to see inclusion of references to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and specific language on sexual and reproductive health, all of which was omitted to avoid a veto of the resolution, we should not lose sight that the adopted resolution is a significant step forward – it is a pivotal step in terms of combating rape as a weapon of war and sexual violence in conflict.

For the first time, survivors of sexual violence in conflict are at the center of this issue. The resolution stresses the need to support children born as a result of rape. Although focused primarily on the experiences of women, the resolution also highlights the need for specific measures for men and boys who are victimized by sexual violence in conflict.

Paramount to the needs of survivors, the resolution acknowledges the importance of reparations. For generations, states have failed to acknowledge and compensate the devastating harm done to survivors.

We intend to change this by coming together with Nadia’s Initiative and the Office of the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict to establish the International Fund for Survivors of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, I have seen how important justice is to the healing process of survivors of rape in conflict. At Panzi Hospital, where I work with my staff to rehabilitate victims of sexual violence, we have developed a comprehensive model, which includes medical, psychological, socio-economic and legal assistance.

Following the adoption of this new resolution, I hope that we can replicate this approach on a much wider scale. For too long, the international community has promised action, while failing to provide access to quality holistic care to survivors.

It is time for serious action against perpetrators. To date, there have been little to no consequences for their crimes. Ending the culture of impunity is central to ensuring that the brutal mass rapes that have happened in the DRC, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere never happen again.

Sexual violence in conflict is devastating – physically and psychologically. Yet, we somehow continue to fail thousands and thousands who have been forced to endure this horror. There can be no lasting peace without justice. This Security Council resolution must now lead to meaningful action.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/05/women-peace-security-lets-turn-words-action/feed/0Women and Girls “Preyed on as the Spoils of War”http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/04/women-girls-preyed-spoils-war/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=women-girls-preyed-spoils-war
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/04/women-girls-preyed-spoils-war/#commentsThu, 25 Apr 2019 07:07:38 +0000Sam Olukoyahttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=161318 This is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Riana Group.

A young girl whose family fled the Boko Haram insurgency stands in front of a tent in a camp for internally displaced persons in Maiduguri, Nigeria. Boko Haram has abducted thousands of girls and forced them into unwanted marriages and enslavement. Credit: Sam Olukoya/IPS

By Sam OlukoyaMAIDUGURI, Nigeria, Apr 25 2019 (IPS)

“They forcefully took us away and kept us like prisoners,” Lydia Musa, a former Boko Haram captive who was abducted at the age of 14 during an attack on her village in Gwoza, in Nigeria’s north eastern Borno State, tells IPS. Musa and two other underaged girls were captured and forced to marry Boko Haram fighters in spite of their protests that they were too young to marry.

“You must marry whether you like it or not they told us as they pointed guns at us,” the now 16-year-old girl recalls.

Boko Haram’s violation of the rights of women and children paints a larger picture of human trafficking, forced marriages and enslavement in Nigeria.

As the extremist group enters the 10th year of its insurgency, it remains formidable enough to abduct women and children at will, continuing “to prey on women and girls as spoils of war,” Anietie Ewang, Nigeria country researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

This West African nation has the highest incidence of Africans being trafficked through the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. The north and north eastern parts of the country, where Boko Haram is active, have high incidences of forced marriages, while across the country there are frequent cases of young girls being ‘traded’ as modern day slaves.

The group, whose name means ‘Western education is forbidden’, is reputed to be among the five-deadliest terror groups in the world. It has been involved in a violent campaign for strict Islamic rule in north east Nigeria and in parts of the neighbouring states of Cameroon, Chad and Niger. More than 20,000 people have been killed since the start of the insurgency in 2009.

Boko Haram is also involved in the kidnapping, trafficking and enslavement of children and women. Hundreds of women and children have been abducted since the group’s insurgency started. But Boko Haram’s most well-known abduction occurred in April 2014, when 276 female students were taken away from their dormitory at the Government Secondary School, Chibok, in Borno State.

A few months after the Chibok girls were abducted, Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, said he would sell them. “I am the one who captured all those girls and I will sell all of them,” he said in an online video in which he justified human slavery. “Slavery is allowed in my religion and I shall capture people and make them slaves.”

Consequently there have been other mass abductions of children in the region since the Chibok incident. In March 2015, Boko Haram fighters abducted more than 300 children from Zanna Mobarti Primary School in Damasak; while 116 female students from the Government Girls Science and Technical College, in Dapchi, Yobe State, were abducted in February 2018 during an attack on the school.

“The way Boko Haram hold women and children against their will is by itself a form of slavery,” Rotimi Olawale of the group Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) tells IPS. The group is involved in a powerful campaign for the speedy and effective search and rescue of the Chibok girls and other abducted women and children.

Olawale says Boko Haram is also using captives, like the Chibok girls, as “valuable bargaining chips” to collect ransoms and secure the release of their members held in Nigerian prisons. While many of the Chibok girls are still missing five years after their abduction, others escaped or were released by Boko Haram in deals made with the Nigerian government. But 112 girls are reportedly still missing.

In an apparent reference to Boko Haram, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says that since 2012, non-state armed groups in north east Nigeria have recruited and used children as combatants and non-combatants, raped and forced girls to marry and committed other grave violations against children.

Ali Mohammed is also a former Boko Haram captive. He tells IPS that while in captivity he saw Boko Haram members using captive girls as sex slaves. “At night they freely go to where the girls are kept to pick them for sex,” he explains.

Another former Boko Haram captive who preferred to be called Halima says male children born through sexual slavery are being breed to be the new generation of Boko Haram fighters. Halima, who gave birth to twins (a boy and a girl), tells IPS how Boko Haram members always celebrate when a baby boy is born in their camps.

“Once they realise it is a male baby they will start shooting their guns into the air in happy mood saying that a new leader has been born,” she says.

“After I delivered the babies, they carried the male in jubilation and were chatting Allah Akbar, in contrast, they did not show any joy with the female, they did not even touch her.”

Boko Haram’s abduction of young persons are in part aimed at turning them into fighters. UNICEF says between 2013 and 2017 more than 3,500 children, most of whom were aged 13 to 17, were recruited by non-state armed groups who used them in the armed conflict in north east Nigeria. UNICEF says the true figures are likely to be higher because its figures are only of those cases that have been verified.

Musa confirms that while in captivity she saw abducted boys being trained to be Boko Haram fighters. “In the mornings, they normally teach them how to shoot guns and carry out attacks,” she says, adding that some of the boys were just 10 years old.

Boko Haram is also known to train children to become suicide bombers. A UNICEF report in 2017, says between January and August of that year, 83 children, mainly girls, were used by Boko Haram as suicide bombers. The UN’s children agency said this figure was four times higher than it was for 2016.

Attempts to use legislation to address such abuses as child marriage, sexual abuse, trafficking and abduction have failed in the past. In 2003, Nigeria adopted the Child Rights Act as a legal documentation to protect children from these abuses. Currently the country’s constitution does not have a minimum age of marriage. Though the Child Rights Act set the marriageable age as 18, it failed in part because a number of Nigeria’s 36 states refused to domesticate the law.

“It was also a failure in states where it was adopted because it only existed on paper and was not enforced,” Betty Abah, a women and children’s rights activist, tells IPS.

In 2016, Nigeria’s male-dominated senate voted against a Gender and Equal Opportunities Bill. The bill in part prohibits trafficking, sexual abuse and exploitation of women and children. The bill, which also prohibits forced marriage, set 18 as the minimum legal age for marriage.

According to UNICEF, 43 percent of girls in Nigeria are married off before they turn 18. Some of the lawmakers who voted against the bill cited such grounds as their religion which permitted underaged marriage.

“It sends a very bad signal that we have a long way to go if those who are supposed to make laws to protect women and children feel these laws are not necessary,” Abah says.

In the meantime, Musa, may have fled the captivity of Boko Haram but she is too terrified to return home. She now lives in Maiduguri, which is also in Borno State and about 130 kms from Gwoza.

She tells IPS she is home sick. “I am always praying for the crisis to end so that I can return home, for now I cant go back because I don’t want to risk being taken away by Boko Haram again.”

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The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) http://gsngoal8.com/ is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/04/women-girls-preyed-spoils-war/feed/1Mobilizing Men as Partners for Women, Peace & Securityhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/04/mobilizing-men-partners-women-peace-security/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=mobilizing-men-partners-women-peace-security
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/04/mobilizing-men-partners-women-peace-security/#respondMon, 08 Apr 2019 14:25:08 +0000Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhuryhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=161080Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury in his address during the launch of the initiative on “Mobilizing Men as Partners for Women , Peace and Security.”

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury is former Under-Secretary-General and High Representative of the United Nations and Initiator of the conceptual breakthrough that led to adoption of UNSCR 1325, as Security Council President in March 2000

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury in his address during the launch of the initiative on “Mobilizing Men as Partners for Women , Peace and Security.”

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury is former Under-Secretary-General and High Representative of the United Nations and Initiator of the conceptual breakthrough that led to adoption of UNSCR 1325, as Security Council President in March 2000

By Ambassador Anwarul K. ChowdhuryUNITED NATIONS, Apr 8 2019 (IPS)

In the first month of Bangladesh joining the Security Council in January 2000, President Nelson Mandela was in New York to report to the Council in his capacity as the UN-mandated facilitator of the Burundi Peace Process. In an informal setting, he shared with us that his efforts to include women in the peace table were not working as participating men stonewalled.

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury

Eager to hear what women want to share, he would invite them to have tea with him in the evenings after the formal meetings were over. At next morning’s formal meeting, Madiba would present some ideas for discussion and men around the table started praising him for those forward-looking ideas.

He alerted them by saying that those were not “my ideas”, rather those were from the women whom the men are not allowing to join at the peace table. The key message here is that women add value and bring in positive perspectives to building peace keeping in mind the best interests of their society.

Women -– equal half of humanity — bring a new breadth, quality and balance of vision to our common effort to move away from the cult of war towards the culture of peace. Women’s equality makes our planet safe and secure.

The reports presented to the 63rd session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) last month underlined that, unfortunately, overall progress towards gender equality had been unacceptably slow, with stagnation and even regression in some areas.

Women’s rights are under threat from a “backlash” of conservatism and fundamentalism around the world.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres lamented that everywhere, we still have a male-dominated culture.

My work has taken me to the farthest corners of the world and I have seen time and again the centrality of women’s equality in our lives.

This realization has now become more pertinent in the midst of the ever-increasing militarism and militarization that is destroying both our planet and our people.

The UN Charter has entrusted the Security Council with the responsibility of maintaining international peace and security. In that context, for 55 years of its existence, the Security Council found women as only helpless victims of wars and conflicts without recognizing their positive role and contribution in that process.

On 8 March 2000, as the President of the Security Council, I could mobilize it to recognize in a statement that “peace is inextricably linked with equality between women and men”, and affirmed the value of full and equal participation of women at all decision-making levels.

That is when the seed for Resolution 1325 was sown. The resolution was finally adopted unanimously on 31 October of the same year, after tough negotiations for eight months.

As you all know, the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 was presented to three women peace builders from Liberia and Yemen. In its citation, the Nobel Committee referred to 1325 and asserted that “We cannot achieve democracy and lasting peace in the world unless women obtain the same opportunities as men to influence developments at all levels of society.”

It is a reality that politics, more so security, is a man’s world. Empowered women bring important and different skills and perspectives to the policy making table in comparison to their male counterparts.

The slogan of the Global Campaign on WPS which we launched in London in June 2014 reiterates “If we are serious about peace, we must take women seriously”.

Patriarchy and misogyny are the dual scourges pulling back the humanity away from our aspiration for a better world to live in freedom, equality and justice.

Men and policies and institutions controlled by them have been the main perpetrators of gender inequality which is a real threat to human progress. Feminism is about smart policy which is inclusive, uses all potentials and leaves no one behind.

I am proud to be a feminist. All of us need to be. That is how we make our planet a better place to live for all.

For the two-year initiative being launched today, all of us should take the vow to profess, advocate and work to ensure feminism as our creed and as our mission.

We should always remember that without peace, development is impossible, and without development, peace is not achievable, but without women, neither peace nor development is conceivable.

Footnote:

“The full and meaningful leadership, empowerment, and protection of women is essential to resolving deadly conflict and building stable, prosperous, and just post-conflict societies. We have created a group of leaders that identifies, encourages, and mobilizes the voices of prominent men and women in support of women’s engagement in global processes of peace, reconciliation, and post-conflict reconstruction.

“Mobilizing Men as Partners for Women, Peace and Security” is bringing global leaders—including prominent men from the defense, diplomacy, development, and business arenas—more fully into the campaign, along with the courageous women leaders who have long driven this advocacy, including grassroots advocates from war-affected countries.

We are partnering with key institutions, including UN agencies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), advocacy groups, and academic institutions. Along with our partners, we ally with, listen to, and open doors for women’s groups and individuals calling for gender justice in conflict and post-conflict settings.

The initiative started by engaging global figures and their senior advisors from dozens of international institutions, NGOs, and governments at a convening in New York City on March 22, 2018, in the margins of the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

The participants agreed that while women-led efforts that created the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda have made considerable progress, men must be part of the solution.

Since our first convening, we have drafted a Charter, a statement of principles, and a call to action on engaging women as leaders, planners, and implementers of peace processes and post-conflict recovery efforts.

Once signed, the Charter will be publicized and shared with policymakers in governments and international organizations. Signatories will serve as Partners in this agenda, using their connections with other global leaders to make these points directly and to facilitate greater access for women advocates.

Our members will help to monitor and encourage full implementation of UN Security Council resolutions, National Action Plans (NAPs), and laws—including the US Women, Peace, and Security Act of 2017—and provide implementers at all levels access to information they need to do their jobs effectively.”

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury in his address during the launch of the initiative on “Mobilizing Men as Partners for Women , Peace and Security.”

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury is former Under-Secretary-General and High Representative of the United Nations and Initiator of the conceptual breakthrough that led to adoption of UNSCR 1325, as Security Council President in March 2000